Calm and still, Harriet Routh stood before her, her head bent forward, her hands clasped and pressed steadily against her waist.
"I have no time to lose," she said, "and the briefest explanation will, in this case, be the best. When that flower fell from your hair over the balcony at the Kursaal at Homburg, it fell at my feet. I was on the terrace beneath. If once, during the time you and he stood there, my husband had looked away from you and over the rail, he would have seen me. But he did not. I had come to that particular spot accidentally, though I was there that night because I suspected, because I knew, that he was there with you, and I would not condemn him unseen, unconvicted."
Cowering before her, her pale face in her shaking hands, the other woman listened.
"I heard all he said to you. Don't start; it was very pretty. I know it all, by heart; every intonation, every hesitation--all the lying gamut from end to end. I heard all the story he told you of his marriage: every incident, every declaration, every sentiment, was a lie! He told you he had married a poor, passionate, silly girl, who had compromised herself through her undisciplined and unreturned love for him, for pity--for a man's pity for a woman! A lie. He told you his wife was an oddity, a nervous recluse, oblivious of all but her health and her valetudinarian fancies; that she had no love for him, or any one; no mind, no tastes, no individuality; that his life was a dreary one, and the oscillation of a heart which had never been hers towards so irresistible a woman as you (and he was right, so far; you are very, very beautiful--I saw that, and granted it to myself, at once) was no sin, no dishonesty, against her. All a lie. Look at me, if you have the little courage needed for looking at me, and tell me if it could be true!"
Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge looked at her, but only to drop her head into her hands, and moan in the presence of the white face and the steady sparkling blue eyes.
"This was the lie he told you concerning me. The lie he told you about himself was more important in its results; and as it flattered you, of course you gave it ready credence. No doubt you believe it still, though you must know him better now. He told you a story of his misunderstood, undervalued life; of family pride, and grandeur, and wealth--of family ties severed in consequence of the charitable, chivalrous, self-sacrificing marriage he had made; of obscurity nobly borne and toil willingly encountered, of talents unremittingly exercised without fame or reward, of high aspirations and future possibilities, if only the agency of wealth and the incentive of love might be his. And this flimsy tale caught your fancy and your faith. It was so charming to fill the vacant place in the misunderstood man's life, so delightful to be at once queen and 'consoler, to supply all the deficiencies of this deplorable wife. It was just the programme to catch the fancy of a woman like you, beautiful, vain, and empty."
There was neither scorn nor anger in Harriet's voice; there was merely a dash of reflection, as if she had strayed for a moment from the track of her discourse.
"But it was all a lie," she went on. "His story of me, and his story of himself, were both equally false. Into the truth, as regards myself, I do not choose to enter. It is needless, and you are as incapable of understanding as you are indifferent to it. The truth about him I mean to tell you for his sake."
"Why?" stammered the listener.
"Because he is in danger, and I want to save him, because I love him---him, mind you, not the man you have fancied him, not the persuasive bland lover you have found him, no doubt; for I conclude he has not changed the character he assumed that night upon the balcony; but the hard, the cruel, the desperate man he is. I tell you"--she drew a little nearer, and again Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge shrank from her--"he is a swindler, a liar, and a thief; he has lived by such means for years, was living by them when he married me. They are failing him now, and he feels the game is up here. What his exact plan is, of course I do not know; but that it includes getting you and your fortune into his power I have no doubt."