“Then your innocence served you better than any coquetry could have done, Mrs. Braithwaite. Having innocently encouraged me to love you, you innocently allowed me to tell you so, with only such vague suggestions of ‘an obstacle’ as served to make me more anxious to win you. When you mysteriously left the company, you had managed to leave me not altogether without hope; when I saw you again, here in town, you managed, without compromising yourself in any way, to make that hope stronger, and it was only when I met the ‘obstacle’ for the first time outside your door that I was allowed to discover that it had any real existence. If you had left me alone then,” continued Aubrey, in a lower voice, his agitation betraying itself, in spite of his efforts to repress it, in convulsive movements of his features and his hands, “I might at least have thought that you felt some shame at the way in which you had treated me; but you wrote me a little note just in the old way, as if the old relations between us were possible. I knew your husband was away again; it was easy for me to see by the way you met him that you hated him. I took your summons, when I at last knew the circumstances of your position, and of mine to you, as any man would have taken it. You had deceived your husband, you had deceived me; you were not the good, true woman I had thought you. Still, if you wanted me back, I cared enough about you still to come, but not on the old terms. That was impossible. You were rather reserved; I thought it a trick of coquetry, naturally enough. I sent you flowers and notes, such as I have sent to other women far less treacherous, but without any of your pretensions to immaculate conduct. To my surprise, you assume in return an attitude of the most rigid dignity and outraged propriety—you have sent for me to answer for my offenses against you. With far more reason I might summon you—if you were not a woman and therefore above laws of justice and humanity—to account for yours against me.”
Aubrey Cooke stood as erect as Harry himself could have done as he spoke, with feeling and with fire, these words to the woman before him.
She had indeed been innocent of the depth of the emotions she had stirred in this man with the expressionless face and hard voice. She had expected to have some difficulty in arguing him into recognizing the fact that her conduct toward him had been dictated by the best possible motives, and that any apparent injustice she had done him was the result of circumstances; but she had not imagined for an instant that he would turn upon her with reproaches so bitter and so well founded that she would be left without a word in answer. Yet it was so; and Annie bent her head for very shame as the torrent of his passionate words passed over her, and she felt that she was without a defense.
Then, seeing her so broken and crushed before him, she who had always held herself so proudly, Aubrey relented—for he loved her still—and, as he saw the tears falling slowly from her downcast eyes on to her clasped hands, he fell upon his knees beside her, and from the stern judge became once more the humble suppliant.
“Annie, Annie, never mind what I have said! I did not want to be harsh, only to let you know—what I ought to have kept from you, I suppose.”
“You said I was wicked,” sobbed Annie, woman-like, seizing the advantage which his remorse at having caused her tears gave her.
“Yes, I know—I was in a passion—I didn’t mean it, of course, Annie. You didn’t tell me you were married—because you thought it would hurt me, and you hated him, and wanted to forget his existence. Well, you were quite right; I could see at a glance that he was an ill-tempered brute, and that you were afraid of him.”
“He is not ill-tempered,” flashed out Annie, with sudden fire. “And all that I am afraid of is that he won’t come back to me, that some one will tell him that I am happy without him, and that he will console himself before I can let him know it is untrue.”
Aubrey was silent for some minutes. He detected in this speech the ring of genuine feeling; and anger and contempt for the woman before him, who seemed to him at that moment the incarnation of fickleness and deceit, overcame his love for her and raised him to his feet again.
“I have no doubt he will wake sooner or later to a sense of what a precious thing he is neglecting in your love!” said he, in a biting voice.