"Her jealousy was not of a mean kind," said Henrietta. "Ever since your marriage it had nourished itself, so far as I understood the matter, upon your devotion to your profession, upon the complacent ease with which you set her claims aside for those which so thoroughly engrossed you, that you had no heart, no eyes, no attention for her. Of late--" she paused.
"Well?" said Wilmot;--"of late?"
"Of late," repeated Henrietta, speaking now with some more reserve of manner, "she believed you devoted--to a degree which conquered your devotion to your profession and to the interests of your own advancement--to the patient who detained you at Kilsyth."
"What madness! what utter folly!" said Wilmot; but his face turned deeply red, and he felt in his heart that the arrow had struck home.
"Perhaps so," said Henrietta, and her voice resumed the cutting tone from which all through this painful interview Wilmot had shrunk. "But Mabel was not more reasonable or less so than other jealous women. You had never neglected your business for her, remember, or been turned aside by any sentimental attraction from your course of professional duty. Friendship, gratitude, and interest alike required you to attend to Mr. Foljambe's summons. You did not come, and people talked. Mr. Foljambe himself spoke of the attractions of Kilsyth, and joked, after his inconsiderate manner."
"In her presence?" said Wilmot incautiously.
"Yes, in her presence," said Henrietta, who perfectly appreciated the slip he had made. "She knew some people who knew the Kilsyths, and she heard the remarks that were made. I daresay she imagined more than she heard. No matter. Nothing matters any more. She was not sorry to die when her time came; she would not have you troubled,--that is all. And now I will leave you. I am going to her."
The last sentence had a dreadful effect on Wilmot. In the agitation, the surprise, the pain of this interview, he had almost forgotten time; the present reality had nearly escaped him. He had been rapt away into a world of feeling, of passion; he had been absorbed in the sense of a discovery, and of something which seemed like an impossible injustice. With Henrietta's words it all vanished, and he remembered, with a start, that his wife lay dead upstairs. They were not talking of a life long extinguished, which in former years might have been made happier by him, but of one which had ended only a few hours ago; a life whose forsaken tenement was still untouched by "decay's effacing fingers." With all this new knowledge fresh upon him, with all this bewildering conviction of irreparable wrong, he might look upon the calm young face again. Not as he had looked upon it yesterday; not with the deep sorrow and the irresistible though unjustified compassion with which death in youth is always regarded, but with an exceeding and heart-rending bitterness, in comparison with which even that repentant grief was mild and merciful. The fixedness, the blank, the silence, would be far more dreadful, far more reproachful now, when he knew that he had never understood, never appreciated her--had unwittingly tortured her; now when he knew that, in all her youth and beauty, she had been glad to die. Glad to die! The words had a tremendous, an unbearable meaning for him. If even the last month could have been unlived! If only he had not had that to reproach himself with, to justify her! In vain, in vain. In that one moment of unspeakable suffering Wilmot felt that his punishment, however grave his offence, was greater than he could bear.
He turned away from Henrietta with the air of a man to whom another word would be intolerable, and sat down wearily. She stood still, looking at him, as if awaiting an answer or a dismissal.
At length she said, "Have you forgotten, Dr. Wilmot, that I asked your permission to carry out Mabel's wish?"