“It was not your fault at all,” he answered gravely. “It was part of our arrangement.”
“I am afraid,” she said, “that it was a very unholy, a very wicked arrangement, only you see I was badly brought up, and it seemed to me so natural, such an excellent way of providing a good time for myself, to marry you, and to owe you nothing except one thing. Henry, you will believe this, I know. I have flirted very badly, and I have had many of those little love-affairs which every woman I know indulges in—silly little affairs just to pass away the time, and to make one believe that one is living. But I have never really cared for anybody, and these little follies, although I suppose they are such a waste of emotion and truthfulness and real feeling, haven’t amounted to very much, Henry. You know what I mean. It is so difficult to say. But you believe that?”
“I believe it from my soul,” he answered.
“You see,” she went on, “it seemed to me all right, because there was no one to point out how foolish and silly it was to play one’s way through life as though it were a nursery, and we children, and to forget that we were grown-up, and that we were getting older with the years. You have been quite content without me, Henry?” she asked, looking up at him wistfully.
“Yes, I have been content!” he admitted, looking away from her, looking out of the room. “I have been content, after a fashion.”
“Ours was such a marriage of convenience,” she went on, “and you were so very plain-spoken about it, Henry. I feel somehow as though I were breaking a compact when I turn round and ask you whether it is not possible that we might be, perhaps, some day, a little more to one another. You know why I am almost afraid to say this. It has not been with you as it has been with me. I have always felt that she has been there—Pauline.”
She was tearing little bits from the lace of her handkerchief. Her eyes sought his fearfully.
“Don’t think, when I say that,” she continued, “that I say it with any idea of blaming you. You told me that you loved Pauline when we were engaged, and of course she was married then, and one did not expect—it never seemed likely that she might be free. And now she is free,” Lady Mary went on, with a little break in her voice, “and I am here, your wife, and I am afraid that you love her still so much that what I am saying to you must sound very, very unwelcome. Tell me, Henry. Is that so?”
Rochester was touched. It was impossible not to feel the sincerity of her words. He sank on one knee, and took her hands in his.