She had never spoken to her husband of her correspondence with Wyant. The mere fact that the latter had appealed to her, instead of addressing himself to Amherst, made her suspect that he had a weakness to hide, and counted on her professional discretion. But his continued importunities would certainly release her from any such supposed obligation; and she thought with relief of casting the weight of her difficulty on her husband's shoulders.
She opened the note and read.
"I did not acknowledge your last letter because I was ashamed to tell you that the money was not enough to be of any use. But I am past shame now. My wife was confined three weeks ago, and has been desperately ill ever since. She is in no state to move, but we shall be put out of these rooms unless I can get money or work at once. A word from you would have given me a start in New York—and I'd be willing to begin again as an interne or a doctor's assistant.
"I have never reminded you of what you owe me, and I should not do so now if I hadn't been to hell and back since I saw you. But I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst. You can tell me when to call for my answer."
Justine laid down the letter and looked up. Her eyes rested on her own reflection in the glass, and it frightened her. She sat motionless, with a thickly-beating heart, one hand clenched on the letter.
"I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst."
That was what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail all this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it, after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"—the ghost of the opinion of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings—returning to the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have guessed what had happened; and his silence had made her believe that he understood her motive and approved it. But, supposing she had been mistaken, she still had nothing to fear, since she had done nothing that her own conscience condemned. If the act were to do again she would do it—she had never known a moment's regret!
Suddenly she heard Amherst's step in the passage—heard him laughing and talking as he chased Cicely up the stairs to the nursery.
If she was not afraid, why had she never told Amherst?
Why, the answer to that was simple enough! She had not told him because she was not afraid. From the first she had retained sufficient detachment to view her act impartially, to find it completely justified by circumstances, and to decide that, since those circumstances could be but partly and indirectly known to her husband, she not only had the right to keep her own counsel, but was actually under a kind of obligation not to force on him the knowledge of a fact that he could not alter and could not completely judge.... Was there any flaw in this line of reasoning? Did it not show a deliberate weighing of conditions, a perfect rectitude of intention? And, after all, she had had Amherst's virtual consent to her act! She knew his feelings on such matters—his independence of traditional judgments, his horror of inflicting needless pain—she was as sure of his intellectual assent as of her own. She was even sure that, when she told him, he would appreciate her reasons for not telling him before....