Monica sat with her face buried in her hands, her whole frame quivering with emotion. Those last words of her husband’s smote her almost like a blow. She deserved them, no doubt; yet they were cruel, coming like that. He could not have spoken so if he loved her. He would not stand coldly aloof whilst she suffered, if he held her really dear. And yet, once he had almost seemed to love her, till she had alienated him by her pride and self-will. It was just, she admitted, yet, oh! it was very hard!
She sat, crushed and confounded, for a time, and it was only by a great effort that she spoke at all.
“I did not know, Randolph; I did not know. You should have told me before.”
“I believed you did know. You told me that you did.”
“Not that. Did you think I could know that and treat him as a friend? Oh, Randolph! how could you? You ought to have told me before.”
“Perhaps I ought,” he said. “But remember, Monica, I spoke out very plainly, and still you insisted that he was, and should continue to be, your friend—your repentant friend.”
Monica raised her eyes to her husband’s face, full of a sort of mute reproach. She felt that she merited the rebuke—that he might have said much more without being really harsh—and yet it was very hard, in this hour of their re-union, to have to hear, from lips that had never uttered till then anything but words of gentleness and love, these reproofs and strictures on her conduct. She saw that he was moved: that there was a repressed agitation and excitement in his whole manner; but she could not guess how deeply he had been roused and stirred by the careless jests he had heard passed that day, nor how burning an indignation he felt towards the man who had plotted to ruin his happiness.
“You should not have left me, Randolph,” said Monica, “if you could not trust me.”
He went up to her quietly, and took her hands. She stood up, looking straight into his eyes.