"Pshaw!" he said, angrily and impatiently; "pray don't talk like this. You are drawing on your imagination very largely, and also on my vanity. The latter is quite useless, I assure you."
"Think what you like, say what you will,--I loved you. I knew it by the listlessness that was always upon me; I knew it better by the disappearance of that listlessness when they said you were coming home; and I knew it best of all when--when do you think, Sir Laurence Alsager?"
"I really could not presume to guess when you made such a discovery, Mrs. Hammond."
"Indeed! I will tell you, then. I learned it best of all when the first pang of jealousy I had ever felt in my life seized me. I had often heard your name coupled with that of some woman of fashion. I had heard a multitude of speculations about your affairs of the heart; but I never feared them--I never believed in them; I never knew that I had so vital an interest in them until your own look, your own manner, your own indecision of purpose about the visit to Redmoor, betrayed you to me, and told me who was my rival."
"Your rival!" said Sir Laurence in astonishment. "Surely you did not suppose I had returned to England to be caught again in your toils?"
"I don't know what I thought; I don't care. I only know that when you and I parted, you loved me, and were angry with me,--it was passionate love and passionate anger,--and that when you and I met, not only had you ceased to be angry, but you were rapidly succumbing to the influence of another woman--a woman utterly different from me! Not more beautiful,--I deny that; she has not the art of being beautiful; she has only the material. A woman whom I hate; whom I should have hated and would have injured, I believe, if you had never seen her. Yes; and you actually dared to menace me on her account; you presumed to pit yourself against me as her champion. You forgot that such championship hardly serves its object, in the eyes of the world."
Sir Laurence uttered an exclamation of disgust; and was about to rise, when she stepped forward close to him, and laid her hands lightly upon his breast for an instant.
"No, no, Laurence," she said; "bear with me. I did not mean it; not quite that. Can you not understand me? Ah, my God! how pitiless men are! While they want to win us, where is the end of that toleration? We may sin as we please, provided we do not sin against them and their self-love. But when that is over, they cannot judge us harshly enough; they have even less pardon and pity for the sins into which they have driven us than for any others."
"You are talking utter nonsense, Mrs. Hammond," said Sir Laurence; "and nonsense it is painful for me to hear. Your temptations are of your own making, and your sins are of your own counselling, not mine. I would have made you my wife, but you preferred--and I thank you for the choice--another destiny. Am I to blame? You have chosen to cherish a distempered fancy which has no foundation in truth, and am I the ruthless being who has robbed you of it? You have chosen to solace the tedium of your uncongenial marriage by a proceeding as vile and unprincipled as any woman ever ventured on, to her eternal shame. Harsh words, Mrs. Hammond, but true; and now you endeavour to lend an air of melodrama to a transaction which was in reality as commonplace as it was coarse. You find it hard to put your relation with Sir Charles Mitford on a sentimental footing,--he is hardly a subject for sentiment, I think; and you have invented this tragical theory of an indirect revenge upon me. Tush! I gave you credit for more tact."
This was well and boldly said; for Sir Laurence had but one object in view,--to do the best he could for Lady Mitford in this encounter with her foe. He knew as he spoke, as he looked into the unmasked face before him--pale and deformed with jarring passions--that the motive was real, though secondary; it had indeed only come to supplement the first, which had led Laura to employ her fascinations upon Sir Charles; but it had always been stronger, and had latterly completely swallowed up the other.