Suddenly, it flashed upon me what it was. How the intuition came, how little things, before unnoticed, seemed to rise and put themselves together, including Saturday's story—and the shudder that ran through Penelope from head to foot, when on Sunday morning old Mrs. Cartwright curtsied to her at the churchdoor—all this I cannot account for, but I seemed to know as well as if I had been told everything. I need not explain, for evidently you know it also, and it is so dreadful, so unspeakably dreadful.
Oh, Max, for the first minute or so, I felt as if the whole world were crumbling from under my feet—as I could trust nobody, believe in nobody—until I remembered you. My dear Max, my own dear Max! Ah, wretched Penelope!
I took her hand as she stood, but she twisted it out of mine again. I listened mechanically to Francis, as he again began rapidly and eagerly to exculpate himself to my father.
“She may tell you all, if she likes. I have done no worse than hundreds do in my position, and under my unfortunate circumstances, and the world forgives them, and women too. How could I help it? I was too poor to marry. And before I married I meant to do everyone justice—I meant—”
Penelope covered her ears. Her face was so ghastly,-that papa himself said, “I think Francis, explanations are idle. You had better defer them and go.”
“I will take you at your word,” he replied haughtily. “If you or she think better of it, or of me, I shall be at any time ready to fulfil my engagement—honourably, as a gentleman should. Good-bye; will you not shake hands with me, Penelope?”
He walked up to her, trying apparently to carry things off with a high air, but he was not strong enough, or hardened enough. At sight of my sister sitting there, for she had sank down at last, with a face like a corpse, only it had not the peace of the dead, Francis trembled. .
“Forgive me, if I have done you any harm. It was all the result of circumstances. Perhaps, if you had been a little less rigid—had scolded me less and studied me more.—But you could not help your nature, nor I mine. Good-bye, Penelope.”
She sat, impassive; even when with a sort of involuntary tenderness, he seized and kissed her hand; but the instant he was gone—fairly gone—with the door shut upon him and his horse clattering down the road—I heard it plainly—Penelope started up with a cry of “Francis—Francis!”—O the anguish of it!—I can hear it now.
But it was not this Francis she called after—I was sure of that—I saw it in her eyes. It was the Francis of ten years ago—the Francis she had loved—now as utterly dead and buried, as if she had seen the stone laid over him, and his body left to sleep in the grave.