An Unpardonable Liar

by Gilbert Parker

She was glad she had forgiven him and glad he had the ring. She had something in her life now that helped to wipe out the past—still, a something of which she dared not think freely. The night before she had sat in her room thinking of the man who was giving her what she had lost many years past, and, as she thought, she felt his arm steal round her and his lips on her cheek, but at that a mocking voice said in her ear: "You are my wife. I am not dead." And her happy dream was gone.

George Hagar, looking up from below, saw her sitting alone and slowly made his way toward her. The result of the meeting between these two seemed evident. The man had gone. Never in his life had Hagar suffered more than in the past half hour. That this woman whom he loved—the only woman he had ever loved as a mature man loves—should be alone with the man who had made shipwreck of her best days set his veins on fire. She had once loved Mark Telford. Was it impossible that she should love him again? He tried to put the thought from him as ungenerous, unmanly, but there is a maggot which gets into men's brains at times, and it works its will in spite of them. He reasoned with himself. He recalled the look of perfect confidence and honesty with which she regarded him before they parted just now. He talked gayly to Baron and Mildred Margrave, told them to what different periods of architecture the ruins belonged, and by sheer force of will drove away a suspicion—a fear—as unreasonable as it was foolish. Yet, as he talked, the remembrance of the news he had to tell Mrs. Detlor, which might—probably would—be shipwreck to his hopes of marriage, came upon him, and presently made him silent, so that he wandered away from the others. He was concerned as to whether he should tell Mrs. Detlor at once what Baron had told him or hold it till next day, when she might, perhaps, be better prepared to hear it, though he could not help a smile at this, for would not any woman—ought not any woman to—be glad that her husband was alive? He would wait. He would see how she had borne the interview with Telford.

Presently he saw that Telford was gone. When he reached her, she was sitting, as he had often seen her, perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap upon her parasol, her features held in control, save that in her eyes was a bright, hot flame which so many have desired to see in the eyes of those they love and have not seen. The hunger of these is like the thirst of the people who waited for Moses to strike the rock.

He sat down without speaking. "He is gone," he said at last.

"Yes. Look at me and tell me if, from my face, you would think I had been seeing dreadful things." She smiled sadly at him.

"No, I could not think it. I see nothing more than a kind of sadness. The rest is all beauty."

"Oh, hush!" she replied solemnly. "Do not say those things now."

"I will not if you do not wish to hear them. What dreadful things have you seen?"

"You know so much you should know everything," she said, "at least all of what may happen."

Then she told him who Mildred Margrave was; how years before, when the girl's mother was very ill and it was thought she would die, the Margraves had taken the child and promised that she should be as their own and a companion to their own child; that their own child had died, and Mildred still remained with them. All this she knew from one who was aware of the circumstances. Then she went on to tell him who Mildred's mother and father were, what were Telford's relations to John Gladney and of his search for Gladney's wife.