“But if persons you like very much, Nevil, should hear?”
“Promise. You are a woman not to break your word.”
“If I decline?”
“Your hand! I’ll kiss it.”
“Oh! my darling.” Rosamund flung her arms round him and strained him an instant to her bosom. “What have I but you in the world? My comfort was the hope that I might serve you.”
“Yes! by slaying one woman as an offering to another. It would be impossible for you to speak the truth. Don’t you see, it would be a lie against her, and making a figure of me that a man would rather drop to the ground than have shown of him? I was to blame, and only I. Madame de Rouaillout was as utterly deceived by me as ever a trusting woman by a brute. I look at myself and hardly believe it’s the same man. I wrote to her that I was unchanged—and I was entirely changed, another creature, anything Lord Romfrey may please to call me.”
“But, Nevil, I repeat, if Miss Halkett should hear...?”
“She knows by this time.”
“At present she is ignorant of it.”
“And what is Miss Halkett to me?”