Here was a pause. For a moment she felt inclined to doubt the fact itself; truthful people have little suspicion of chicanery or falsehood, and when she came to think, innumerable circumstances confirmed Grime's statement. Yes, it must be true. This, then, was Nathanael's secret. Why had he kept it from her.
“As if he thought I cared for money! As if”—and a choking filled her throat—“as if I would have minded being ever so poor did he only love me!”
The thought burst out naturally, like water forcing its way through muddy reeds—showing how, deep down, there lay the living spring.
“Now, let me consider. He must have had some strong reason for keeping this secret. It cost him much; he said so. But I never heeded that. How I wearied him about not taking the house; how angry I was at his acceptance of the stewardship. And it was for me he wished to toil—for me, and for our daily bread! Yet he would not tell me. And all the while he must have had numberless cares and anxieties without, and his own wife blindly tormenting him at home. Last of all I called him mercenary. And what did he answer? Nothing! Not one reproach—not one word of anger. Yet still—he kept his secret Why?”
Here she paused again. All was mystery.
“It might have been through tenderness—to save me pain. Yet no—for he could not but see how his silence stung me. Then since he kept not this secret for love of me—and I am hardly worth such loving—it must have been from some motive, perhaps higher than love—some bond of honour which he could not break. Did he not say something to that effect once? Let me think.”
Again she sat down, and so far as her excited feelings would allow, tried to recall the story of their acquaintance, courtship, marriage—a six-month's tale—how brief, yet how full. Amidst its confusion, amidst all the variations of her own feelings, stood out one steadfast image—her husband.
His character was peculiar—very peculiar. Its strength, reticence, power of silentness and self-control were beyond her comprehension; but its uprightness, truth, and rigid immaculate honour—she could understand those. It must have been his sense of honour and moral right that in some way impelled this concealment, even at the hazard of wounding the wife he loved—if he ever had loved her.
For a minute or so Agatha's mind almost lost its balance, rocking on this one point of torture—then it settled. “God knows I did love you, Agatha.” He had said so—he who never uttered a falsehood. It was enough.
“Yet he 'did' love me; that means he does not now. I have wearied him out with my folly, my coldness, and at length with that one last insulting wrong. I—to tell him he 'married me for my money'—when all the while I was a beggar on his hands! Yet he never betrayed a word. Oh, no wonder he despises me. No wonder he has ceased loving me. He never can love me any more.”