"You have been told lies!" she said; "lies which, were it not to cure your madness, and to show you how weak you are, and how mercilessly you have been played upon, I would scorn to answer! So these dear delightful people have started that story about me, have they; have tried to degrade me in my husband's eyes by such a miserable concoction as that; and my husband has believed them. It is only on a par with the rest of the generous sympathy they have shown me, and like all the rest of their wretched machinations, it has some slight shadow of a foundation. Captain Lyster has been here; has been here frequently,--oh, you need not raise your eyebrows,--it was not to see me he came. I will tell you, in self-defence, what I would not have mentioned otherwise. Ever since Mrs. Schröder's trouble, Captain Lyster has been her kindest and most active friend. Before she was married he took the greatest interest in her; and it was only her father's incontrovertible desire that she should marry as she did, that prevented him from proposing for her. More; when you saw us walking together at that garden-party at Uplands, it was of Alice he was speaking; it was to tell me of how her reputation had been imperilled by false and cowardly reports, that he had sought me out; and it was to ask my advice and assistance, to enlist me on her side, that he was so urgent."
"How can I be sure of this?"
"How can you be sure of it! Did I ever tell you a falsehood in my life? You know perfectly well,--you would know, at least, if you had not been blinded by ridiculous jealousy, springing from suspicions artfully sown,--that I am incapable of deceiving you in any way."
"What brought Captain. Lyster so frequently to my house, in the early days,--before the garden-party at Uplands, I mean,--and why did he always come when I was away?"
"Shall I tell you what I believe brought Captain Lyster so frequently to your house, Frank Churchill? I did not intend to mention it; I intended to have spared you. Mind you, he never said as much to me,--he is too true and too honourable a gentleman to cast a slur on any one; but I honestly believe that Captain Lyster's visits to me were paid through sheer pity."
"Pity!"
"Ay, pity! He is a keen observer, a shrewd man of the world, for all his vapidity and his drawl; and I firmly believe that he pitied me from his soul. He had known me in other days, recollect; he had seen me when--well, there is no vanity in saying it; you know it as well as I do--when I was thought and made much of; when the world was to me a very light and pleasant place, in which I moved about as one of the favoured ones; when I did not know what it was to be checked or thwarted, and when all paths were made smooth for me. He found me solitary, dull, wretched; in a dreary quarter of the town, which was utterly unknown to me; my only acquaintance, people with whom I had not one single thing in common,--people looking with horror on all I had been accustomed to enjoy, and enjoying all I had heartily detested. He found me triste and low; he thought I was becoming dejected and unhappy; not that I ever told him so, of course,--my pride is as great as his; but he is, as I have said, no fool, and he found it out. What did he do? In the most delicate manner possible, he tried to rouse me, and to show me what source of happiness I had in my new position and in your love. He was the only link between my old and my new life; the only person I used to see, who went among the people with whom I had formerly lived. Was it very extraordinary for a girl to ask news of those with whom the whole of her life had been spent? I used to ask Captain Lyster for such news; and he would give it me, always in the gentlest and most delicate manner; telling me, of course, of gaieties that had taken place, but pointing out how silly they were, and how happy the most fêted girls at them would be to settle down into a calm happy love, such as--such as he thought I possessed."
"Did he say all this?"
"He did; and more--much more. Since I have been here, Alice Schröder has told me that on several occasions when your name has been freely commented upon, Captain Lyster has defended you with the utmost warmth, and with a spirit which one can scarcely imagine so naturally indolent a man to be capable of exercising. More than this: when the unhappy story of our separation became public scandal, I, having hitherto refrained from speaking to Captain Lyster about it, but knowing that he must now have heard all, was about one day to ask his advice. He stopped me at once. 'Pardon me, my dear Mrs. Churchill,' he said; 'this is a topic on which I cannot and must not enter. The time will come when--when it will be all happily settled again; and you would then very much regret having discussed the subject with me. If it should ever be my luck to be married, and I had--as undoubtedly I should have--a dispute with my wife, I would lock the door until we had settled it, and returned to our usual equable state. Not one living soul should ever be able to jeer me about a matrimonial quarrel.'"
"He was right; God knows he was right!" said Churchill, bitterly.