"You speak as though you asked, or desired me to account for it too," said Henrietta, in a cold and cutting tone, which rebuked the vehemence of his manner, and revealed the intense, unsleeping egotism of her disposition. "I could do so, I daresay; but I cannot see the profitableness of such a discussion between you and me. It is too late now; nothing can undo the wrong, no matter what it was, or how far it extended. It is all over, and I have nothing more to do than to carry out the last wishes of my dear friend. Have I your permission to do so?" she asked, in the most formal possible tone, as she rose and stood opposite him.
Wilmot put his hands up to his face, and walked hurriedly about the room. Then he came suddenly towards Henrietta, and said with intense feeling:
"I beg your pardon; I did not mean to speak roughly: but I am bewildered by all this. I am sure you must feel for me; you must understand how utterly I am unable to comprehend what has occurred. To come home and receive such a shock as the news of my wife's death, was surely enough in itself to try me severely. And now to hear what you tell me, and tell me too so calmly, as if you did not understand what it means, and what it must be to me to hear it! You were with her, her chosen friend. I think you knew her better than anyone in the world."
"And if I did," said Henrietta,--all her assumed calm gone, and her manner now as vehement as his own,--"if I did, is not that an answer to all you ask me? If I am to explain her motives, to lay bare her thoughts, to tell her sorrows, to you, her husband, is that not your answer? Surely you have it in that fact! They are not true husband and true wife who have closer friends. You never loved her, and you never knew or cared what her life was; and so, when she was leaving it, she kept you aloof from her."
Wilmot made no sound in reply. He stood quite still, and looked at her. His eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and she had raised her veil. He could see her face now. Her pale cheeks, paler than usual in her grief and passion, her deep angry sorrowful eyes, and her trembling lips, made her look almost terrible, as she stood there and told him out the truth.
"No," she went on, "you did not know her, and you were satisfied not to know her; you went complacently on your way, and never thought whether hers was lonely and wearisome. You never were unkind to her, you say; no, I daresay you never were. She had all the advantages to which your wife was entitled, and she did you and them due honour. Why, even I, who did, as you say, know her best, had suspected only recently, and learned fully only since her illness began, all she suffered; no, not all--that one heart can never pour into another--but I have only read the story of her life lately, and you have never read it at all. You were a physician, and you did not see that your own wife, a dweller under your own roof, whose life was lived in your sight, had a mortal disease."
"What do you mean?" he said; "she had no such thing."
"She had!" Henrietta repeated impetuously; "she had a broken heart. You never ill-treated her--true; you never neglected her--true,--until she was dying, that is to say;--but did you ever love her, Dr. Wilmot? Did you ever consider her as other or more than an appendage of your position, an ornament in your house, a condition of your social success and respectability? What were her thoughts, her hopes, her disappointments to you? Did you ever make her your real companion, the true sharer of your life? Did you ever return the love, the worship which she gave you? Did you ever pity her jealous nature; did you ever interpret it by any love or sensitiveness of your own, and abstain from wounding it? Did you know, did you care, whether she suffered when you shut yourself up in your devotion to a pursuit in which she had no share? All women have to bear that, no doubt, and are fools if they quarrel with the bread-winner's devotion to his work. Yes; but all women have not her silent, brooding, jealous, sullen nature; all women are not so little frivolous as she was; all women, Dr. Wilmot, do not love their husbands as Mabel loved you."
She paused in the torrent of her words, and then he spoke.
"All this is new and terrible to me; as new as it is terrible. Mrs. Prendergast, do me the justice to believe that."