“How can you ask?” she said almost bitterly. “You surely must know how terrible they were to me! You could not be the man you have seemed to be to-day if you did not know what you were doing to me in making all those terrible threats. You must know how cruel they were.”
“I am afraid I don’t understand,” he said earnestly, the trouble still most apparent in his eyes, “Would you mind being a little more explicit? Would you mind telling me exactly what you think I wrote you that sounded like a threat?”
He asked the question half hesitatingly, because he was not quite sure whether he was justified in thus obtaining private information under false pretenses, and yet he felt that he must know just what troubled her or he could never help her; and he was sure that if she knew he was an utter stranger, even a kindly one, those gentle lips would never open to inform him upon her torturer. As it was she could tell him her trouble with a perfectly clear conscience, thinking she was telling it to the man who knew all about it. But his hesitation about prying into an utter stranger’s private affairs even with a good motive, gave him an air of troubled dignity, and real anxiety to know his fault that puzzled the girl more than all that had gone before.
“I cannot understand how you can ask such a question, since it has been the constant subject of discussion in all our letters!” she replied, sitting up with asperity and drying her tears. She was on the verge of growing angry with him for his petty, wilful misunderstanding of words whose meaning she felt he must know well.
“I do ask it,” he said quietly, “and, believe me, I have a good motive in doing so.”
She looked at him in surprise. It was impossible to be angry with those kindly eyes, even though he did persist in a wilful stupidity.
“Well, then, since you wish it stated once more I will tell you,” she declared, the tears welling again into her eyes. “You first demanded that I marry you—demanded—without any pretense whatever of caring for me—with a hidden threat in your demand that if I did not, you would bring some dire calamity upon me by means that were already in your power. You took me for the same foolish little girl whom you had delighted to tease for years before you went abroad to live. And when I refused you, you told me that you could not only take away from my mother all the property which she had inherited from her brother, by means of a will made just before my uncle’s death, and unknown except to his lawyer and you; but that you could and would blacken my dear dead father’s name and honor, and show that every cent that belonged to Mother and Jefferson and myself was stolen property. When I challenged you to prove any such thing against my honored father, you went still further and threatened to bring out a terrible story and prove it with witnesses who would swear to anything you said. You knew my father’s white life, you as much as owned your charges were false, and yet you dared to send me a letter from a vile creature who pretended that she was his first wife, and who said she could prove that he had spent much of his time in her company. You knew the whole thing was a falsehood, but you dared to threaten to make this known through the newspapers if I did not marry you. You realized that I knew that, even though few people and no friends would believe such a thing of my father, such a report in the papers—false though it was—would crush my mother to death. You knew that I would give my life to save her, and so you had me in your power, as you have me now. You have always wanted me in your power, just because you love to torture, and now you have me. But you cannot make me forget what you have done. I have given my life but I cannot give any more. If it is not sufficient you will have to do your worst.”
She dropped her face into the little wet handkerchief, and Gordon sat with white, drawn countenance and clenched hands. He was fairly trembling with indignation toward the villain who had thus dared impose upon this delicate flower of womanhood. He longed to search the world over for the false bridegroom; and, finding, give him his just dues.
And what should he do or say? Dared he tell her at once who he was and trust to her kind heart to forgive his terrible blunder and keep his secret till the message was safely delivered? Dared he? Had he any right? No, the secret was not his to divulge either for his own benefit or for any other’s. He must keep that to himself. But he must help her in some way.
At last he began to speak, scarcely knowing what he was about to say: