"May I not be allowed to speak?" she pleaded. "Is it not possible that when you come to hear my story——"
Mrs. Rent raised her hand imperiously.
"Tell her to be silent," she commanded her son. "Oh, I do not know what to do or what to say in such a crisis. Is it not bad enough without bringing your partner in folly under this roof? To think that I should have lived to see a scene like this at Alton Lee! To think that I should be the instrument chosen by Providence for the punishment of my own son! For that is what it comes to, Arnold. I was stunned at first. I was unable to believe the evidence of my senses. But I begin to see my way clearly. The path of duty lies plainly before me."
There was something cold and chilling in the words. They filled Kate Charlock with dismay. All the world seemed to be slipping from under her feet. If the opportunity were lost, the chance would never come again. She darted forward and threw herself in an abandon of grief on her knees before the mistress of the house. The ready tears were streaming from her eyes. Her beautiful features were almost irresistible in their entreaty.
"Oh, won't you listen to me?" she said. "You are a kind, good woman; your face tells me that. And yet, though you would be good and generous towards the world, you decline to listen to one poor woman's story. Can't you understand how one may suffer year by year until the strain becomes too great, and, in a moment of passing madness, sacrifice everything that a woman holds dear? That is my case exactly. Oh, it is all very well for you, whose married life has been the path of happiness, to judge humanity from your own standpoint. But there are others——"
The woman's voice snapped suddenly like the breaking of a harp-string. She covered her face with her hands, her whole frame shaking with convulsive sobs.
Nor was it all acting. For the time, Kate Charlock was convinced that she was the unhappy, abandoned wife of a man who had driven her almost to madness in one moment of divine despair. She thrilled with self-pity. She saw her airy castles crumbling to the ground. Unless this old woman could be moved, there would be no rest for the sole of her foot at Alton Lee. The face that she raised once more to Mrs. Rent's dark eyes was stained with tears and broken with emotion. Fighting for self-control as she was, Helen Rent was moved now as she had seldom been moved before.
"Get up," she said, almost gently. "It is unseemly that you should be kneeling here. If you have a story to tell, I may be disposed to listen to it presently."
Slowly Kate Charlock rose to her feet and felt her way across the room to a chair. She had made an impression. On that point she felt certain. If she could only remain here a week, or even a day, she had no fear of the result. Alton Lee was growing nearer. She began to see herself installed. She could hear the swish of the cards on the green-topped tables. She could imagine the rooms gay with the laughter of friends. But not yet, she told herself, not quite yet.
"I will say no more," she murmured. "Indeed, when I came here I had no intention of speaking at all. I see now how wrong it was to come. But in the moment of my madness and despair——"