CHAPTER XXIII.
Lorin little guessed how his words, "You might have saved him," concerning his cousin Wallace stung Laline.
It was a view of the matter which had never presented itself to her that she had failed in her duty when she fled from her husband and her father at Boulogne. The formal and business-like contract before the Consul had meant so little to her, and the shock of discovering Wallace's real feelings and character was so great, that flight seemed the only course open to her at the time. But now, from the mouth of the man she loved, she heard the first judgment and condemnation of her conduct which had ever reached her, and as she walked on in silence by his side in her heart she rebelled against the sentence.
She was so young. What possible influence could a girl of sixteen have had over a man of determined temper and confirmed bad habits such as Wallace Armstrong? He did not even love her. Had she not heard him avow to her father that he considered her in the light of an encumbrance? More than that—his words had clearly foreshadowed the rough and even brutal treatment she would receive should she refuse to tell a series of lies to gain his ends. And by her help he had attained them. He had been taken to England, had been received into his uncle's house and given that start in life of which he professed to stand in need. Had she sacrificed her life to him as well, what more could he have secured? He had had his chance and had miserably failed to make use of it. With a wife or without a wife, in all probability he would still have been the same worthless, reckless, ne'er-do-well he had that evening shown himself to be.
Another point presented itself clearly to Laline in the pause that followed Lorin's speech. It was evident that he had formed an unfavourable opinion of his cousin's lost bride. On the strength of the falsified certificate and Wallace's misrepresentations he believed that she had been married for rather more than a month before she died. Should Laline therefore have been minded to tell him the whole truth, she would not only have had the greatest difficulty in making it credible and comprehensible to him, but she would have had to persuade him, in the face of her husband's and her late father's testimony and that of the certificate, that she had never been more than a nominal wife to his cousin.
A hot blush enveloped her from head to feet at the thought. Lorin was inclined to be jealous. How would he ever believe her again when he recalled her oft-repeated assertions that never before had she known the happiness of loving and being loved, and that his kisses were the first she had ever received, in the face of the fact of that early marriage?
To confide in him was clearly impossible. From what he had already stated as his opinions he might even think it right for her to go back to her husband, a course of which the mere idea sickened and terrified her. And yet, while he ignored the fact of her marriage, how could she possibly sever the link between them?
"Lorin," she asked him, suddenly, "what would you do, loving me as you say you do—and I believe you—if some terrible obstacle were to come between us?"
"I should fight against it until it was destroyed, of course."
"No—don't answer lightly. I am in earnest—in terrible earnest! Suppose it was with you as with some people in a book I read not long ago—that you had, while very young, contracted a marriage, a wholly unsuitable marriage, with a woman, whom you had left immediately because you found you had been terribly mistaken in her; suppose that you saw and heard nothing of her for years, and that then, having good reason for believing your wife dead, you had met me—just as you did, you know—and had grown to love me, as a man can love, with all your heart and mind and soul?"