He shrugged his shoulders and went away. I now almost believe he has guessed nothing. And how easily would a woman have known. It was but poor satisfaction, whatever way you looked at it. But I was determined that not the slightest measure of reproach should ever reach Clarissa's ears. She had followed her Fate. God knows she has paid the woman's utmost penalty. I can conceive no greater price. In no man's reckoning enters such a sum of atonement as this. He pays with remorse, with shame and with dishonor; but what are these beside two living eyes that gaze and gaze and gaze into your own as long as the days run on from one year to another?
There came no judgment to my mind of her. I know no man, and certainly no woman, who is qualified to judge of another in such an issue as this. It is the greatest law that Nature has made, and God—if you would differentiate between them two—has laid down His seal upon it in the little village of Bethlehem. It may violate then a million times the earthly social law; but who is there to sit in judgment over God?
And besides all this, it was Clarissa. In the heart of me, I almost think I thanked the bitter cause that had sent her thither. It brought so much that I could do for her, more than I had ever had the opportunity for doing for any other woman in the world. Surely I had cause for gratitude there.
When the nurse arrived I was more determined than before that the truth of Clarissa's condition should never be known. Nurse Barham was elderly, but unmarried—a woman of florid face and thin lips, who, having helped at the birth of so many children, had lost all proportion of romance, and, never knowing such romance of her own, had come to regard life with bitter calculation.
Immediately after my interview with her I sent for Mrs. Bullwell before they could find opportunity to exchange their confidences.
"Mrs. Bullwell," said I, "I don't know what your morals are, but that lady upstairs is my wife."
"Glory, sir!" was all she exclaimed.
"If that's an expression of praise," said I, "or satisfaction, so much the better. But you understand it, don't you? To Nurse Barham, to me, to everybody in this house, that lady is Mrs. Bellairs, and if I hear of your spreading the faintest suspicion of her being anything else, we shall have to find another place for you."
She clasped her hands as though she would pray to God that such catastrophe might never befall her. Her moral sense came second, and with an impulsive gesture she laid a fat, red hand upon my arm.
"But you will marry the poor thing, won't you, sir?" she begged. "You will marry her when it's all over?"