"Well, remember it is a secret—a secret between us."
Rylton draws back as if stabbed. He would have given his soul to hear the end of this terrible beginning—this beginning that, at all events, sounds so terrible to him; but the fact that he is longing to hear, that he has been listening, makes him cold from head to heel.
He moves away silently. Mrs. Bethune, catching his arm, says quickly:
"You heard—a secret—a secret between those two—you heard!"
There is something delirious in her tone—something that speaks of revenge perfected, that through all his agitation is understood by him. He flings her hand aside, and goes swiftly onwards alone into the dense darkness of the trees beyond, damning himself as he goes. A very rage of hatred, of horror of his own conduct, is the first misery that assails him, and after that——
After that he sees only Tita sitting there with Hescott beside her—he whispering to her, and she to him.
He stops in his rapid walk, and pulls himself together: he must have time—time to think, to control himself, to work it all out.
Things seem to come back to him with a strange clearness. He remembers how Tita had once said to him that she never cared to kiss anyone except—Margaret. Her hesitation returns to him now; was Margaret the name she would have said had not fear, mixed with prudence, prompted her words? He remembers, too, that she had once refused to let him kiss her lips—him, her husband! Why? He trembles with rage as he asks himself this question. Was it to keep them sacred for someone else—for that "old lover" of hers, for example?
Who had called him that? Marian, was it not? Old lover!
He had laughed at the name then. That child to have a lover! Why, he had believed she did not know the meaning of the word "love." What a baby she had always seemed to him—a careless, troublesome baby. And now!