“Well, what is that to me?”
Cornel looked at her wonderingly, asking herself whether there was a mistake; but growing confident, she went on—
“This, madam: my lover—I speak to you in the homely fashion of our people—my lover came here to England, and his success was beyond my wildest dreams. We wrote to each other, and we were happy in the expectation of our future, till he saw you, and then—all was changed.”
“Is this the beginning of some romance? But, of course—your love-story.”
“Yes, madam, and no romance. But I do not come to speak angrily to you—I do not heap reproaches upon your head. I come to you simply as one woman in suffering should appeal to another.”
The Contessa made a contemptuous gesture.
“In my simple, faithful love for the man pledged to be my husband—the man who has sinned against me in what is but a base love for you—I am ready to forgive him, and look upon the past as dead. And now I come as a suppliant to you, asking you to set him free, that he may sin no more.”
“What! How dare you?” cried the Contessa. “Such words to me!”
“From his promised wife, madam! Yes: I dare tell you, because, with all your wealth and beauty, even your power over his weakness, I am stronger in my right. You have blinded him—turned him from the path of duty—you are the destroyer of his future.”
“Absurd, girl! This Mr Dale, the artist employed by my husband—surely in his vanity he has not dared—”