"Would to God, Ellen, that there was truth in you! It is equally difficult to believe and to disbelieve you."
"Think not of me; leave me, Edward, leave me. I have told you the truth. I do not care for Henry; I solemnly protest to you that I do not; but I cannot be your wife—that is the truth, too."
"Then why these tears?" said Edward, sternly. "Why all this acting? Why cannot you tell me calmly, and at once, that you care not for me, instead of deluding me into the belief that you do, at the very moment when you refuse me."
Suffocated with grief, I hid my face in my hands while he spoke; and said to myself, "Acting he calls it! Oh, God! he calls me an actress! He says there is no truth in me! How then would he listen to my tale of guilt and of sorrow? How then could he read truth in my broken accents? How could he discern the workings of a proud and wounded spirit?"
I raised my head slowly—Edward was gone; I rushed to the door to call him back, but was met by the servant, who was come to answer the drawing-room bell. My uncle and aunt came into the room at the same time, and I retired to mine, to pass another night betwixt hours of waking misery, and moments of broken and feverish sleep.
At six o'clock in the morning I was woke out of one of these last, by the sound of carriage-wheels. Jumping out of bed, I went to the window, and unclosing the shutter, I saw Edward's carriage rolling away along the avenue, and ours being packed in the court below. I felt glad that we were going too; glad that we were going to London; glad that there was something to think of—to talk of—to do. Glad! what a misuse of words. God knows, there was no gladness in my heart that morning, but it was something to be able to forget myself occasionally in the bustle and excitement around me. Mr. and Mrs. Middleton were not aware that anything had passed between Edward and myself. They mentioned him several times in the course of the day, and spoke of seeing him in London in three weeks' time.
At seven that evening we arrived in London, where I had not been for several years before; its immensity, the perpetual noise of carriages, the heaviness of the atmosphere, made me feel in another state of existence, and when giddy with the rapid motion of the carriage, flushed by the sudden transition from the cold night air to the vicinity of a blazing coal fire, I sat down to dinner in the small front dining-room of a house in Brook-street. It was only the uneasiness which I felt at the idea that any moment might bring Henry Lovell into my presence, that made me aware that nothing in myself or in my fate was changed. Really very much fatigued, I begged to go to bed, immediately after dinner, and, for many hours, slept heavily, in oblivion of all I had suffered, and all I feared.
CHAPTER X.
"Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends."