“It seems to have grown with me. I shrank from her when, as a child, I was first brought into her presence. Her look was contemptuous, cruel; for all that I was such a poor, helpless creature, and should have moved her pity. Since I have known everything, she has seemed to me the more to be blamed I cannot sympathise with her, though I know others do. There is no motive in her life that seems to me noble or lovable. I think her selfish; I think she has brought upon herself all her troubles by her deliberate choice of lower things. I may miss the better points in her character; I am intensely prejudiced.”
Meres listened with pain which at length compelled him to turn his head away. Ada would not look at him. She knew what she was inflicting, but could not stay her tongue sooner. One of the million forms of jealousy fretted her, and jealousy is cruel.
“Did she ever tell you anything of my earlier life?” he asked, when he could command his voice.
“Nothing, except that you had—had not been happy in your marriage.”
It was a little strange for her to be speaking thus with a man so much her elder, but the subject of their emotions put them on equal ground.
“Do you know that I was once secretary to Mr. Clarendon?”
She gazed at him with agitated interest.
“I did not know that.”
“Yes, I was; all through the five years of his married life. I had many opportunities of understanding his private affairs, and I could not help seeing what the relations were between him and his wife. Mrs. Clarendon is to be forgiven everything.”
Ada heard, with bowed head.