“Yes, I see it now; and yet you know, mamma, I am not really ill-tempered—at least, I never used to be; but you know I loved, or,” she added with a sigh, “I may say I love Harry so very dearly, that the slightest neglect or unkindness on his part appears such a cruel return for my affection that I cannot bear it quietly; if I were not to lose my temper and get angry about it, I should pine away and die—I know I should!”
“Did you ever tell him this?” inquired Mrs. Hazlehurst.
Alice shook her head. “One does not tell such things,” she said; “if Harry cared for my affection he would soon perceive how entirely I love him; if, as I fear, he is indifferent to it, all the telling in the world would make no difference; besides, I have heard from his own lips that he loves another.”
“I do not make out that affair at all,” observed Mrs. Hazlehurst, reflectively; “it is so completely unlike Mr. Coverdale’s straightforward, honest character, to marry one woman when he cared for another, that I cannot but think there must be some mistake about it.”
“How can there be any mistake, dear mamma?” was the rejoinder. “I have long felt certain that Miss Crofton was attached to Harry; and I myself heard him say to her that he was most unfortunate, because love which he could not return was lavished upon him (meaning mine), while he had alienated by his own act (his marriage of course) the only affection he cared to possess (that is Arabella Crofton’s): I do not know what could be clearer.”
“Did you not say that Mr. Coverdale appeared aware that he had neglected you for his sporting, and blamed himself for so doing?”
“Yes; I think he knows it, and is sorry for it—and—and he does not leave me nearly so much alone as he used; only I fancied—that is, I was afraid he did so from a sense of duty, and not because it was a pleasure to him to stay with me. Harry has a very strict sense of duty.”
“You say he seems to doubt your affection,” continued Mrs. Hazlehurst, “and you own you conceal it from him, treating him to bursts of pettishness and ill-humour, of which you refuse to explain the cause. You also tell me that this Miss Crofton appears to have been attached to Mr. Coverdale; now, from what you have told me of the way in which you behaved at Lady Trottemout’s party—which I confess I think was both foolish and wrong—I can easily conceive your husband to have been greatly annoyed with you; and it seems to me that nothing would be more natural than for him to have told, or in some way to have allowed Miss Crofton to perceive his annoyance; in which case, as I fear she must be a designing, unprincipled woman, she might avail herself of the opportunity to contrast her own affection with your disobedience and petulance. Thus your husband’s speech, on which you have built up all this alarming fabric of future unhappiness, may be interpreted much more satisfactorily: as, for instance, the affection lavished on him, which he could not return, might be Miss Crofton’s, and the love he coveted, yours, which he by his own neglect had alienated. Do you perceive?”
“Oh yes, mamma!” exclaimed Alice, eagerly, her face lighting up with the ray of hope thus given her; “I see it really might mean that! Oh, if I dare but believe it was so!”
She paused to reflect, and as the recollection of Harry’s frank, earnest face, and simple, truthful manner came across her, when in their last discussion he had told her there was not, and never had been, anything between himself and Miss Crofton which need give her uneasiness, she, for the first time since Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s soirée, allowed herself to hope that she had mistaken the meaning of the words she had overheard; that her husband still loved her; that she had only to show him how these troubles and estrangements had served but to prove to her the depth and reality of their mutual affection; and that, warned by past experience to bear and forbear, a life of happiness still awaited them.