As he delivered the bill into her keeping, he took her hand and endeavoured to convey it to his lips.
She drew back with an air of offended dignity, which would have well become a lady that had never surrendered herself to the pleasures of an illicit love.
"No, Mr. Greenwood," she said, in a firm, and even haughty tone: "all that is ended between you and me. You are a heartless man, who cannot appreciate the warmth with which a confiding woman yields herself up to you;—you have treated me—the daughter of a peer—like a pensioned mistress. But let that now pass:—I have made you acquainted with the nature of my thoughts—and I am satisfied."
"I am at a loss to understand how I should have deserved these harsh words, Cecilia," replied Greenwood, with a somewhat supercilious smile; "but perhaps my inability to supply you with the means of gratifying your extravagances has given you offence."
"Your cool indifference of late has indeed given me a bitter lesson," said Lady Cecilia.
"And yet I manifested every disposition to serve you, madam," rejoined Greenwood haughtily, "when I consented to compromise your husband's felony."
"Yes—you generously abandoned your claim to a thousand pounds," exclaimed Cecilia, with cutting irony, "in order to hush up an intrigue with the wife of the man whom you had inveigled into your net. But think not, Mr. Greenwood, that I attempt to justify my husband's conduct: I know him to be a heartless—a bad—an unprincipled man;—and yet, Mr. Greenwood, I do not conceive that you would shine the more resplendently by being placed in contrast with him. One word more. Had you refused to deliver up that bill, I was prepared to pay it. Some unknown friend had heard of this transaction—heaven alone knows how; and that friend forwarded last evening the means wherewith to liquidate this debt. Here is the letter which contained a Bank-note for a thousand pounds: it fell into my hands, and my husband knows naught concerning it;—can you say whose writing that is?"
Greenwood glanced hastily at the letter, and exclaimed, "Yes—I know that writing well: Mrs. Arlington is your husband's generous friend!"
"Mrs. Arlington!" exclaimed Cecilia: "Oh!—now I recollect that rumour points to that woman as having once been my husband's mistress."
"The same," said Greenwood, struck by this noble act on the part of the fair one whom he himself had first seduced from the paths of virtue.