“You the wife of Mr. Tudor Hereward? I say it is impossible!” repeated Madame Von Bruyin.
“I would to Heaven that it were impossible,” moaned Lilith.
“It cannot be true!” reiterated the baroness.
“I call Heaven to witness that it is true, madame. I am very sorry—I beg you to forgive me—I should never have told you, madame, but to save you from vain and sinful hopes and dreams. Indeed, I am very sorry, and I beg you to forgive me.”
“You are, then, the child-wife whom Tudor Hereward married in haste and in rage to be revenged on me?” sternly demanded the baroness.
Lilith, with her face still buried in her hands, answered by a nod and a silent sob.
“You seem, then, to have entered my service under false pretences?” sneered the lady.
“No, madame,” gently replied Lilith, “under no false pretences. Under reserve, if you please, under reticence in regard to my past life, but under no false pretences.”
“You entered my service as a widow.”
“Pardon me, madame, I never told you that I was a widow. I signed my name to my letters, Elizabeth Wyvil. When we met you called me Miss Wyvil. I told you that I was not ‘Miss’ Wyvil. You then took it for granted that I was Mrs. and a widow—as, indeed, I was in fate, if not in law. Remember, dear madame, that I gave you my college testimonials as references, and told you that the good women who allowed me to refer to them—I mean Mrs. Ponsonby, of Baltimore, and Mrs. Downie, of New York—really knew very little of me, but had taken me up in faith and charity.”