“I am bound, and indeed most willing to believe, you mean kindly by me; I will therefore explain to you that which I would not have condescended to explain to any other man living—that I merely admit Mr. D’Almayne’s intimacy to oblige my husband, who has become so accustomed to his society and services, as to consider them indispensable. Mr. D’Almayne may or may not deserve the harsh epithets you apply to him; but if you are aware of any circumstances seriously affecting his character, it is to Mr. Crane you should mention them, not to me.”
For a moment Arthur remained silent, then pressing his hand to his forehead, he murmured inaudibly, “She can actually stoop to deceit!—is such a change possible!”
Surprised and hurt at his silence, Kate resumed: “Why do you not speak? You look at me as if you doubted my assertion!” Unheeding her question, Arthur still continued to regard her with an expression in which grief, surprise, and disapproval, contended for the mastery. At length he said, in a low deep voice, which caused a shudder to pass through the frame of his auditor—
“I have suffered much on your account, but such pain as this I never thought to experience!—Kate, you once said you had never attempted to deceive me—can you say so now?”
“I am at a loss to understand you,” was the reply; and as she grew angry at what she deemed unmerited insult, her self-possession returned, and she spoke in her usual cold, hard tone of voice. “I can only repeat what I before stated, that I allow Mr. D’Almayne’s intimacy merely to oblige my husband. From your manner you still appear to doubt the fact—may I ask why?” Arthur paused for a moment, then, with an eager and excited voice, he exclaimed—
“Kate, hear me! I have not taken this step lightly, or without due consideration. I seek not to refer to the past, though that past is never absent from my memory; but you may imagine it cost me some resolution to come here to-day, when I tell you that I had rather have seen you lying dead before my eyes, feeling towards you as I felt one short year ago, than behold you surrounded by the luxuries of wealth—knowing as I do that you have obtained them by the sacrifice of all that is lovable in woman, by sinning against all your best and noblest impulses, by forfeiting all that renders life aught but one weary, endless round of cares and duties! To look on you as you are now—to read, as I can read, in every feature of your countenance, which, though a sealed book to others, I have studied too long not to decipher at a glance, traces of that desolation of heart which you have prepared for yourself—to see you thus, and to know that I am powerless to help you, and that you must sustain the burden of such an existence unaided, is to me bitter pain, and I have avoided this house as though it were plague-stricken. But as I sat through the long hours last night, striving to weigh dispassionately the past and the present, I arrived at the conclusion that even yet I owed you a duty, and I came here to-day actuated only by a desire to warn you, and to save you from a fate, to contemplate the mere possibility of which inspires me with horror. I came, regardless of my own feelings, forgetful of my wrongs, to do you a benefit; and now you close your soul against me, and receive me with hard words and cold looks! Kate, I have not deserved this at your hands!”
“But, indeed—believe me you are mistaken,” replied Kate, eagerly; “I appreciate and thank you for the interest you still take in one who, as you truly say, has forfeited every claim on your regard; but your fears and suspicions are groundless—the intimate footing Mr. D’Almayne has attained in this house is merely a natural consequence of the trust Mr. Crane reposes in him. Why will you not believe the truth of what I tell you?”
“Because it is impossible for me to do so without doubting the evidence of my own senses,” was the stern reply. “If you require any further reason for my scepticism it is this: I was in ———— Street, Pentonville, at two o’clock yesterday!”
“And if you were,” rejoined Kate, with flashing eyes, “you saw nothing to justify you in entertaining such a cruel and unjust suspicion of one whom you should have been the last to believe likely to sacrifice anything for love; and whom you might have known better than to deem an easy prey for the first self-confident libertine who should condescend to display his butterfly attractions in her presence. I consider that you have insulted me deeply—so deeply as to relieve me from part of the weight of self-reproach with which I have hitherto deplored the injury that by my choice of a career I have inflicted on you. You say it pains you to enter this house; I now therefore beg you to leave it, and will esteem it a favour—the only one I desire of you—not to enter it again until—yes! until I send for you!”
As she spoke she rose hastily, and rang the bell. Astonished at the effect of his speech, and for the moment overpowered by her vehemence, Arthur stood speechlessly regarding her. Then rousing himself by an effort, he said in a low, deep voice, that, trembled with suppressed emotion—