“What is the matter, Mary?” he asked her after a pause. “Once before I begged of you to tell me if you could. I say again that perhaps I may be able to help you out of your trouble, though I know that I am not a man of many resources.”
“I cannot tell you,” she said slowly, but with great emphasis. “There are some sorrows that a woman must bear alone. It is Heaven's decree that a woman's sorrow is only doubled when she tries to share it with another—either with a sister or with a brother—even so good a friend as Oliver Goldsmith.”
“That such should be your thought shows how deep is your misery,” said he. “I cannot believe that it could be increased by your confiding its origin to me.”
“Ah, I see everything but too plainly,” she cried, throwing herself down on her chair once more and burying her face in her hands. “Why, all my misery arises from the possibility of some one knowing whence it arises. Oh, I have said too much,” she cried piteously. She had sprung to her feet and was standing looking with eager eyes into his. “Pray forget what I have said, my friend. The truth is that I do not know what I say; oh, pray go away—go away and leave me alone with my sorrow—it is my own—no one has a right to it but myself.”
There was actually a note of jealousy in her voice, and there came a little flash from her eyes as she spoke.
“No, I will not go away from you, my poor child,” said he. “You shall tell me first what that man to whom I saw you speak in the green room last night has to do with your sorrow.”
She did not give any visible start when he had spoken. There was a curious look of cunning in her eyes—a look that made him shudder, so foreign was it to her nature, which was ingenuous to a fault.
“A man? Did I speak to a man?” she said slowly, affecting an endeavour to recall a half-forgotten incident of no importance. “Oh, yes, I suppose I spoke to quite a number of men in the green room. How crowded it was! And it became so heated! Ah, how terrible the actresses looked in their paint!—almost as terrible as a lady of quality!”
“Poor child!” said he. “My heart bleeds for you. In striving to hide everything from me you have told me all—all except—listen to me, Mary. Nothing that I can hear—nothing that you can tell me—will cause me to think the least that is ill of you; but I have seen enough to make me aware that that man—Captain Jackson, he calls himself——”
“How did you find out his name?” she said in a whisper. “I did not tell you his name even at the Pantheon.”