She smiled at him, the brightest smile that had been on her face these years past, and she answered softly: “‘I did not think there was so great faith—no, not in Israel!’” Then the happiness passed from her lips to her eyes. “Your faith has made me happy, Ro—I am selfish, you see. Your love in itself could not make me happy, for I have no right to listen, because—”
She paused. It seemed too hard to say: the door of her heart enclosing her secret opened so slowly, so slowly. A struggle was going on in her. Every feeling, every force of her nature was alive. Once, twice, thrice she tried to speak and could not. At last with bursting heart and eyes swimming with tears she said solemnly:
“I can never marry you, Ranulph, and I have no right to listen to your words of love, because—because I am a wife.”
Then she gave a great sigh of relief; like some penitent who has for a lifetime hidden a sin or a sorrow and suddenly finds the joy of a confessional which relieves the sick heart, takes away the hand of loneliness that clamps it, and gives it freedom again; lifting the poor slave from the rack of secrecy, the cruelest inquisition of life and time. She repeated the words once more, a little louder, a little clearer. She had vindicated herself to God, now she vindicated herself to man—though to but one.
“I can never marry you; because I am a wife,” she said again. There was a slight pause, and then the final word was said: “I am the wife of Philip d’Avranche.”
Ranulph did not speak. He stood still and rigid, looking with eyes that scarcely saw.
“I had not intended telling any one until the time should come”—once more her hand reached out and tremblingly stroked the head of the child—“but your faith has forced it from me. I couldn’t let you go from me now, ignorant of the truth, you whose trust is beyond telling. Ranulph, I want you to know that I am at least no worse than you thought me.”
The look in his face was one of triumph, mingled with despair, hatred, and purpose—hatred of Philip d’Avranche, and purpose concerning him. He gloried now in knowing that Guida might take her place among the honest women of this world,—as the world terms honesty,—but he had received the death-blow to his every hope. He had lost her altogether, he who had watched and waited; who had served and followed, in season and out of season; who had been the faithful friend, keeping his eye fixed only upon her happiness; who had given all; who had poured out his heart like water, and his life like wine before her.
At first he only grasped the fact that Philip d’Avranche was the husband of the woman he loved, and that she had been abandoned. Then sudden remembrance stunned him: Philip d’Avranche, Duc de Bercy, had another wife. He remembered—it had been burned into his brain the day he saw it first in the Gazette de Jersey—that he had married the Comtesse Chantavoine, niece of the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, upon the very day, and but an hour before, the old Duc de Bercy suddenly died. It flashed across his mind now what he had felt then. He had always believed that Philip had wronged Guida; and long ago he would have gone in search of him—gone to try the strength of his arm against this cowardly marauder, as he held him—but his father’s ill-health had kept him where he was, and Philip was at sea upon the nation’s business. So the years had gone on until now.
His brain soon cleared. All that he had ever thought upon the matter now crystallised itself into the very truth of the affair. Philip had married Guida secretly; but his new future had opened up to him all at once, and he had married again—a crime, but a crime which in high places sometimes goes unpunished. How monstrous it was that such vile wickedness should be delivered against this woman before him, in whom beauty, goodness, power were commingled! She was the real Princess Philip d’Avranche, and this child of hers—now he understood why she allowed Guilbert to speak no patois.