“How can you risk your life so madly,” she replied, in a tone of reproach, “and for no reason, too?”
“Is my safety indeed an object of interest to you?” inquired I; then, unable to restrain myself any longer, I continued, “Clara, dearest Clara, have you forgiven me? Indeed, I have been punished sufficiently; I have been so utterly, so intensely miserable.”
“And have I been happy, do you think? Frank, it was cruel of you to doubt me—you, to whom I have told everything—you, who of all the world should have been the last to mistrust me; I never could have doubted you.”
“It was cruel; it was ungenerous in the extreme, I own it—and yet, believe me, dear Clara, I did not doubt you lightly; proofs, that to my short-sightedness appeared incontrovertible, were brought against you; the letters I wrote, entreating you if but by a line or message to relieve, my anxiety, remaining unanswered—letters which I was assured you had received—your sudden intimacy with that hateful Wilford—”
“Stay!” she exclaimed, interrupting me, “let me explain that at once; it is easy to show you how that is to be accounted for—”
“Indeed, Clara, it is unnecessary,” I began.
“If not for your satisfaction, at least for my own, let me explain how this sudden good understanding with one so lately a stranger to me arose:” she continued, “Richard Cumberland, on his return, seemed resolved to throw off all disguise, and determined to make me feel that I was in his power; his attentions became most intolerable, and all my endeavours to repulse him appeared but to increase the evil. This went on till I was obliged to remain in my own room the greater portion of every day, and actually dreaded the approach of dinner-time, when I knew I should be forced to endure his society. The arrival of Mr. Fleming, or Wilford, as you say his real name is, was therefore a great relief to me. Cumberland, for some reason or other, appears most anxious to keep on good terms with him—why, I cannot tell, for I am much mistaken if he does not both hate and fear him. Mr. Wilford, who, whatever his real character may be, possesses great tact and penetration, and can behave like a most refined and polished gentleman, appeared to discover by intuition that Cumberland's attentions were distasteful to me, and contrived in a thousand different ways to relieve me from them, always doing so with the most perfect sang-froid and apparent unconsciousness. Although, from the first moment I saw him, I felt an instinctive mistrust and fear of him, I could not but feel grateful for the delicate tact with which he came to my assistance; and as the only effectual way to distance Richard Cumberland appeared to be conversing with Mr. Wilford, I can well understand even a more intelligent observer than my faithful old Peter fancying that I gave him encouragement. I was further induced to admit his society from the fact, that he never attempted in the slightest degree to take unfair advantage of the unusual intimacy which circumstances had produced between us. He had never even alluded to Cumberland's attentions (though he must have been long aware of them, and of the annoyance they occasioned me) till that unfortunate morning when the encounter took place between you in the Park.
“At the breakfast-table that day, some scheme had been proposed which would have involved my riding alone with Mr. Cumberland; on my endeavouring to avoid doing so, provoked beyond endurance, he forgot his usual caution, and made some brutal allusion to the time when his will, and not my caprice, would be the law, doing so with such coarse violence that I left the room in tears. Mr. Vernor summoned me shortly afterwards to walk with him, in order, as I believe, to lecture me; but his purpose was frustrated by Mr. Wilford's joining us. Just before we met you, my guardian was accidentally called away, when Mr. Wilford expressed his indignation at the scene which had taken place at breakfast, and his surprise that I found it possible to endure such insolence, adding, that he had ventured to remonstrate with Mr. Cumberland on the subject, but had been angrily repulsed. I really felt obliged to him for what I deemed his disinterested kindness; and, in the course of conversation, allowed him to elicit from me an account of my early engagement to Richard Cumberland; and the words which you so strangely overheard, referred, as you may easily believe, to that.”