"Perhaps you know my father was a Major in the Scots Greys; your brother knew him: his name was Duncan."
Cyril starts involuntarily.
"Ah, you start. You, too, knew him?"
"Yes, slightly."
"Then," in a curiously hard voice, "you knew nothing good of him. Well," with a sigh, "no matter; afterward you can tell me what it was. When I was eighteen he brought me home from school, not that he wanted my society,—I was rather in his way than otherwise, and it wasn't a good way,—but because he had a purpose in view. One day, when I had been home three months, a visitor came to see us. He was introduced to me by my father. He was young, dark, not ugly, well-mannered," here she pauses as though to recover breath, and then breaks out with a passion that shakes all her slight frame, "but hateful, vile, loathsome."
"My darling, don't go on; I don't want to hear about him," implores Cyril, anxiously.
"But I must tell you. He possessed that greatest of all virtues in my father's eyes,—wealth. He was rich. He admired me; I was very pretty then. He dared to say he loved me. He asked me to marry him, and—I refused him."
As though the words are forced from her, she utters them in short, unequal sentences; her lips have turned the color of death.
"I suppose he went then to my father, and they planned it all between them, because at this time he—that is, my father—began to tell me he was in debt, hopelessly, irretrievably in debt. Among others, he mentioned certain debts of (so-called) honor, which, if not paid within a given time, would leave him not only a beggar, but a disgraced one upon the face of the earth; and I believed him. He worked upon my feelings day by day, with pretended tears, with vows of amendment. I don't know," bitterly, "what his share of the bargain was to be, but I do know he toiled for it conscientiously. I was young, unusually so for my age, without companions, romantic, impressionable. It seemed to me a grand thing to sacrifice myself and thereby save my father; and if I would only consent to marry Mr. Arlington he had promised not only to avoid dice, but to give up his habits of intemperance. It is an old story, is it not? No doubt you know it by heart. Crafty age and foolish youth,—what chance had I? One day I gave in, I said I would marry Mr. Arlington, and he sold me to him three weeks later. We were married."
Here her voice fails her again, and a little moan of agonized recollection escapes her. Cyril, clasping her still closer to him, presses a kiss upon her brow. At the sweet contact of his lips she sighs, and two large tears gathering in her eyes roll slowly down her cheeks.