Rhoda’s cheeks blanched. What was he going to say?
“You were wounded, I suppose, that I went away without saying good-bye to you, when you had been so good to my boy, so patient with my wife, so conscientious for me?”
“Oh, pray don’t think about it. Of course, at such a time, after such a tragedy——”
He cut her short.
“Tragedy! Yes, it was a tragedy. Can you guess, I wonder, what a tragedy it was to me?”
“I think I can. Worshipping this lovely woman, in all her beauty and charm, the effect upon you must have been stupendous, unimaginable.”
Sir Robert turned upon her suddenly, with a fire she had never before seen shining in his eyes.
“That was not the worst part of it,” he said in a sonorous voice. “What I was suffering from when that awful sight was suddenly presented to my eyes was—self-reproach. Self-reproach so terrible, so keen, that I could have cut off my right hand, drowned myself, shot myself, in the depths of my own self-abasement.”
Rhoda almost thought he had lost his reason, so amazing, so preposterous did such an attitude seem in the husband who had done so much for a wife who neglected and despised him.
With a pained frown he went on: