“It was a good time to make anything happen,” replied Bettina. “You were prostrated, you were a child, and felt yourself cast off hopelessly from the people who loved you.”
“Forever! Forever!” Lady Anstruthers' voice was a sharp little moan. “That was what I felt—that nothing could ever help me. I dared not write things. He told me he would not have it—that he would stop any hysterical complaints—that his mother could testify that he behaved perfectly to me. She was the only person in the room with us when—when——”
“When?” said Betty.
Lady Anstruthers shuddered. She leaned forward and caught Betty's hand between her own shaking ones.
“He struck me! He struck me! He said it never happened—but it did—it did! Betty, it did! That was the one thing that came back to me clearest. He said that I was in delirious hysterics, and that I had struggled with his mother and himself, because they tried to keep me quiet, and prevent the servants hearing. One awful day he brought Lady Anstruthers into the room, and they stood over me, as I lay in bed, and she fixed her eyes on me and said that she—being an Englishwoman, and a person whose word would be believed, could tell people the truth—my father and mother, if necessary, that my spoiled, hysterical American tempers had created unhappiness for me—merely because I was bored by life in the country and wanted excitement. I tried to answer, but they would not let me, and when I began to shake all over, they said that I was throwing myself into hysterics again. And they told the doctor so, and he believed it.”
The possibilities of the situation were plainly to be seen. Fate, in the form of temperament itself, had been against her. It was clear enough to Betty as she patted and stroked the thin hands. “I understand. Tell me the rest,” she said.
Lady Anstruthers' head dropped.
“When I was loneliest, and dying of homesickness, and so weak that I could not speak without sobbing, he came to me—it was one morning after I had been lying awake all night—and he began to seem kinder. He had not been near me for two days, and I had thought I was going to be left to die alone—and mother would never know. He said he had been reflecting and that he was afraid that we had misunderstood each other—because we belonged to different countries, and had been brought up in different ways——” she paused.
“And that if you understood his position and considered it, you might both be quite happy,” Betty gave in quiet termination.
Lady Anstruthers started.