As Dick did not immediately answer her questions, she spoke to him again.
“Why do you not reply to me, Mr. Hammond?”
“Ah, my poor child! my dear child! you readily surmised that I had painful matters to communicate, but you never divined how painful,” said Dick, sorrowfully.
“You alarm me again. For Heaven’s sake, speak and shorten this torture,” she pleaded.
“You believe yourself to be the wife of Alexander Lyon?” said Dick, modulating his voice to a tone of the deepest and most respectful sympathy.
“‘Believe,’ sir? I am so,” answered Drusilla, drawing herself up with a proud and confident smile.
“I feel assured that you think as you say. My long knowledge of you, my earnest esteem for you will not permit me to question your good faith. But my poor Drusilla, my dear girl, I fear, I greatly fear that you are mistaken.”
“I am not, sir. I cannot be mistaken on such a subject,” answered Drusilla. And as all the deep dishonor implied in the doubt rushed over her mind, her face and neck were suffused with the crimson flush of wounded delicacy and offended pride, and she added, “You must know, sir, that to question my wifehood is to insult me.”
“Heaven is my witness, how far from my heart is the wish to offend you, how profound and respectful is my sympathy for you, and how deeply it pains me to give you pain. But I must do my duty. Most willingly would I have avoided this task, if I could have done so; but I could not. And I come to serve and to save you, and one who is dearer to me than all others besides,” said Dick, earnestly.
“I think I know why you speak to me in this manner. You have suffered yourself to be misled by the transient imaginings of a monomaniac, who is so sane on all other subjects, and with one exception so strong and clear in judgment and understanding, that you have failed to discover his hallucination to be what it is. But I will soon convince you that it is you who are mistaken, and not I,” replied Drusilla, with much dignity.