"And you saw Horace, and he is ill?" says Georgie, anxiously. "Tell me all, Clarissa."
"It is so hard to tell," says poor Clarissa; and then she turns her face to the wall, and wishes honestly that all things for her might now be at an end:
"Love, art thou bitter?
Sweet is death to me."
At this moment she could have gladly welcomed death.
"There are many things," she says, "but this worst of all. He does not love me; he has never loved me. And there is some one else; and——"
"Who is it?" asks Georgie, breathlessly, though the truth as yet is far from her.
"Ruth Annersley! She was there,—in his rooms!" says Clarissa; and, after this, there is a silence that lasts for several minutes.
The unhappy truth is told. Clarissa, shamed and heartbroken, moves away, that her companion may not see her face. As for Mrs. Branscombe, at first intense wonder renders her motionless; and then, as the exact meaning of this terrible story breaks in upon her, a great and glorious gleam of unmistakable rapture lights all her face, and, sinking upon a prie-Dieu near her, she presses her hands tightly together. That Dorian is exonerated, is her first thought; that he will never forgive her, is her second; and this drives all the blood from her cheeks, and the gladness from her heart, and brings her back again to the emptiness and barrenness that have made life a wilderness to her for so many months.
Going over to Clarissa, she lays her arms gently round her neck. There seems to be a new bond, born of grief, between them now.
"Do not pity me," says Clarissa, entreatingly.