‘Things about you, my angel!’ exclaimed her enamoured husband, with genuine surprise. ‘What is there about you that could possibly annoy me? Why, I think you perfection—you know I do—and would not have you altered in any particular for all the world.’
‘Then why are you so depressed, Ilfracombe?’ said Nora. ‘It is not only I who have noticed it. Everybody, including your mother and sister, say the same, and it is not very complimentary to me, you know, considering we have only been married five months, is it?’
Lord Ilfracombe grew scarlet. The moment had come, he saw, for an explanation, and how could he make it? He feared the girl beside him would shrink from him with horror if she heard the truth. And yet he was a man of honour, according to a man’s idea of honour, and could not find it in his heart to stoop to subterfuge. If he told Nora anything, he must tell her all.
‘Dearest,’ he said, laying his fair head down on her shoulder, ‘I confess I have felt rather miserable lately, but it has nothing to do with you. It concerns only my self and my past life. I have heard a very sad story since we came home, Nora. I wonder if I dare tell it to you?’
‘Why should you not, Ilfracombe? Perhaps I can guess a good part of it before you begin.’
‘Oh, no, no, you cannot. I would rather not think you should. And yet you are a little woman of the world, although you have been so long cooped up (as you used to tell me) in Malta. Your father told me, when I proposed for you, that I must be entirely frank and open with you, for that girls now-a-days were not like the girls of romance, but were wide awake to most things that go on in the world, and resented being kept in the dark where their affections were concerned.’
‘I think my father was right,’ was all that Nora replied.
‘And yet—and yet—how can I tell you? What will you think of me? Nora, I have been trying so hard to keep it to myself, lest you should shrink from me, when you hear the truth; and yet, we are husband and wife, and should have no secrets from each other. I should be wretched, I know, if I thought you had ever deceived me. I would rather suffer any mortification than know that, and so perhaps you, too, would rather I were quite honest with you, although I have put it off so long. Would you, my dearest?’ he asked, turning his handsome face up to hers. Nora stooped and kissed him. It was a genuine kiss. She had not been accustomed to bestow them spontaneously on her husband, but she knew what was coming, and she felt, for the first time, how much better Ilfracombe was than herself.
‘Yes, Ilfracombe,’ she answered gravely, ‘trust me. I am, as you say, a woman of the world, and can overlook a great deal.’
‘That kiss has emboldened me,’ said the earl, ‘and I feel I owe it to you to explain the reason of my melancholy. Nora, I have been no better than other young men—’