"Yes, Lady Mitford," he went on; "I have returned to find that all I feared,--more than I feared,--has befallen you. It was an unequal contest; you had only innocence and purity, an old-fashioned belief in the stability of human relations and the sanctity of plighted faith; and what weapons were these in such a fight? No wonder you are vanquished. No wonder she is triumphant--shameless as she is heartless. I wound you," he said, for she cowered and trembled at his words; "but I cannot keep silence. I have seen shameful things,--I am no stranger to the dark passages of life; but this is worse than all. Good God! to think that a man like Mitford should have had such a chance and have thrown it away! To think that--"
"Hush, Sir Laurence!" she said, and stretched her hand appealingly towards him; "I must not hear you. I cannot, I will not affect to misunderstand you; but there must be no more of this. I am an unhappy woman--a most wretched wife; all the world--all the little world we think so great, and suffer to torment us so cruelly--knows that. Pretence between us would be idle; but confidence is impossible. I cannot discuss Sir Charles Mitford's conduct with any one, least of all with you." She seemed to have spoken the last words unawares, or at least involuntarily, for a painful blush, rose on her face and throat.
"And why," he eagerly asked,--"why least of all with me? I have been honoured by your friendship,--I have not forfeited it, have I? I know that conventionality, which is a systematic liar and a transparent hypocrite, would condemn in theory a woman to keep her garments folded decorously over such mortal heart-wounds; I know that poets snivel rhymes which tell us how grand and great, how high and mighty, it is 'to suffer and be strong.' I know how easy some people find it to see others suffer, and be perfectly strong in the process; but such rubbish is not for you nor for me. I cannot return to London and hear all that I have heard; I cannot come here and look upon you--" his voice faltered, but he forced it into the same hurried composure with which he had been speaking. "I cannot see you as I see you now, and talk to you as an ordinary morning visitor might talk, or even as we have talked together, when these things were coming indeed, but had not yet come."
She was leaning forward now, her face turned towards him, but hidden in her hands. He gazed at her with a kindling glance, and strode fiercely backward and forward across the wide space which lay before the window.
"I am not a good man," he went on, "according to your standard of goodness, Lady Mitford; but I am not a bad man according to my own. I have had rough tussles with life, and some heavy falls; but I swear there is a dastardly, cold, heartless ingratitude in this business which I cannot bear; and in the sight of you there is something terrible to me. Men know this man's history; we know from what degradation you raised him; we are not so blind and coarse that we cannot guess with what fidelity and patience you loved him when it was at its deepest. And now, to see him return to it; to see him, without any excuse of poverty or struggle, in the enjoyment of all that fate and fortune have blindly given him; to see him play the part of a liar and a villain to you--to you--to see you left unprotected, openly neglected and betrayed, to run the gauntlet of society such as ours! I cannot see all this, Lady Mitford, and pretend that I do not see it; and what is more, you do not wish that I could. You are too true, too womanly to form such a wish; and you are too honest to express it, in obedience to any laws of cant."
He went near to her; he bent down, he lowered his voice, he gently drew away the hands that hid her face from him; they dropped into her lap, nerveless and idle; the first tears he had ever seen in her eyes dimmed them now.
"You mean kindly, as you have always meant to me, Sir Laurence," she said; "but we cannot discuss this matter,--indeed we cannot. I am weaker than I ought to be,--I should not listen to this; but oh, God help me, I have no friends; I am all alone, all alone!"
If she had been beautiful in the pride and dignity of her sorrowful composure, if his strong heart had quailed and his firm nerve had shrunk at the sight of her pale and placid grief, how far more beautiful was she now, when the restraint had fallen from her, when the eyes looked at him from the shadow of wet lashes, and the perfect lips trembled with irrepressible emotion.
"No!" he said vehemently; and as he spoke he stood close before her, and stretched his hands towards her, but without taking hers; the gesture was one of mingled denial and appeal, and had no touch of boldness in it; "no, you are not alone; yes, you have friends,--at least you have one friend. Listen to me,--do not fear to hear me; let us at least venture to tell and listen to the truth. This man, to whom you were given as a guardian angel, is quite unworthy of you. You know it; your keen intellect accepts a fact and all its consequences, however terrible to your woman's heart, and does not palter with the truth. Are you to be always miserable because you have been once mistaken? If you had known, if you had been able to comprehend the real nature of this man, would you, could you ever have loved him?"
She put up her hand with a faint gesture of protest; but he impetuously waved it away, and went on, once more striding up and down.