'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?'