Isabel had not resumed her seat. She moved about in much agitation, and at length threw herself on her knees by him.
“It is something that I ought to have told you before,” she said. “It seemed, though, such an easy difficulty to overcome; I was so happy, and I would not think of anything in the way. I—” she hid her face against him—“I have lived beyond my income, and have had to borrow money—a large sum of money. I could not have done it, I think, unless it had seemed certain that I should marry some rich man,—though I had to insure my life, and there was my annuity. You know I have had only two thousand a year; it was so little for the way in which I lived. I have always been so thoughtless about money. I could not foresee this great happiness that has come to me. Do not think—Bernard, you won’t think that I should have ever married only because the man who asked me was rich,—I mean if I had never known you. You won’t think that? I have told you that I could never have brought myself to that. Listen, the day before my accident, before I knew that you loved me, before my own love for you had become certain in my heart, Lord Winterset asked me to be his wife, and I—I refused.”
She had looked up pleadingly, but at the end hid her face again. Oh, it is so hard to a woman—nay, that is unjust, to a man also—to speak out the whole truth in self-accusation. Who ever yet did it? What penitent at the confessional? What votary in silent prayer? Maybe it is regard for the dignity of human nature which chains the tongue, that dignity which it costs so much to support, which we so often feel to be a name only, or the shadow of a name.
Kingcote could say nothing.
“Still, listen to me, my dearest! I could not let that stand between us. The debt would have to be paid some day, and when I knew who my husband was to be, there was only one way of meeting it. I should have asked Ada,” her voice sank, “to give me the money. She will be rich, very rich; she could easily give me that. She is good-hearted, I know, though we have never been able to love each other. Before her marriage I would have asked her to give it me, and she would not have refused; it would have been her first act when the property became hers.”
He laid his hand upon her bowed head, and stroked it tenderly; then he raised her to sit by him again.
“I am so glad you have told me that,” he said, smiling very kindly. “Let it be the end of your trouble. Ada will still give you the money when she is of age.”
She kept a long silence before her next words, then looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Are we to be parted so long?”
“But our marriage as yet was in any case impossible. It was bad enough to ask you to share poverty with me; you could not support my sister and her children.”