‘You were, Henry!’ said Hannah, looking at him steadily. ‘Have you forgotten that already?’
The man shivered, and turned away. But, the next moment, he was braving it out.
‘You were, you mean, confound you!’ he retorted. ‘But if I choose to have my brother here, I shall do so without asking your leave, and that I tell you.’
‘I don’t think he would care to accept your invitation now,’ she said, ‘for you have behaved so rudely to him—once at the theatre and yesterday, when his friend was present,—that he would, I fancy, be rather afraid of subjecting himself to the daily risk of renewing such scenes. Arthur told me this afternoon that—’
‘What?—what?’ cried Hindes, quickly, ‘what did he tell you? He doesn’t suspect, does he, Hannah—he doesn’t think—you haven’t told him,’ he continued, grasping her arm as if he held it in a vice. ‘You haven’t betrayed me—speak, speak, for God’s sake! Don’t keep me in suspense!’
He looked so abject as he put the question with trembling eagerness, that her heart went out to him with a great burst of pity. He was a murderer—but she loved him.
‘No, no, darling!’ she replied, with unwonted tenderness, as she bent down and kissed his haggard face, ‘how can you think so for a moment? I shall never, never betray you, Harry; not even at the bar of Heaven. If I am brought up there as witness against you, I will go to hell sooner than open my mouth. Don’t think it of me! You are not safer with God Himself than you are with me, my poor Harry!’
‘I know it, I know it!’ he muttered; ‘but why can’t Arthur come here, then?’
‘Because—oh! there are many reasons; don’t make me reiterate them. But one is, that I am afraid your conduct would excite his attention and, perhaps, his suspicions. You are not master of yourself, Henry! That dreadful morphia makes you just the same as if you were intoxicated. It is killing you, body and soul. You take far too much of it. You must give it up. Oh! do promise me, Hal, to try and do without it. Half your time you are so stupid, you don’t know what you are saying or doing. Even the servants see the alteration in you. Do give it up, Henry. I would ask it of you on my bended knees if I thought it would have any effect. Promise me you will throw the horrid bottle away, and never take any more of it.’
‘I cannot, I cannot!’ he replied in a despairing whisper. ‘I take it to keep her away. Directly I leave it off for a night she comes and reproaches me with—you know what—and I cannot bear her eyes, they drive me mad.’