“You know, too,” she continued presently, “what has been the end of all this, the shameful end. I am not come to blame you. I do not blame you, for the fault was mine, and if I have anything to forgive I forgive it freely. Whatever memories may still live in my heart I swear I put away all bitterness, and that my most earnest wish is that you may be happy, as happiness is to you. The sin was mine; that is it would have been mine were we free agents, which perhaps we are not. I should have loved my husband, or rather the man whom I thought my husband, for with all his faults he was of a different clay to you, Edward.”
He looked up, but said nothing.
“I know,” she went on, pointing to the picture over the mantelpiece, “that your mind is still set upon her, and I am nothing, and less than nothing, to you. When I am gone you will scarcely give me a thought. I cannot tell you if you will succeed in your end, and I think the methods you are adopting wicked and shameful. But whether you succeed or not, your fate also will be what my fate is—to love a person who is not only indifferent to you but who positively dislikes you, and reserves all her secret heart for another man, and I know no greater penalty than is to be found in that daily misery.”
“You are very consoling,” he said sulkily.
“I only tell you the truth,” she answered. “What sort of life do you suppose mine has been when I am so utterly broken, so entirely robbed of hope, that I have determined to leave the world and hide myself and my shame in a sisterhood? And now, Edward,” she went on, after a pause, “I have something to tell you, for I will not go away, if indeed you allow me to go away at all after you have heard it, until I have confessed.” And she leant forward and looked him full in the face, whispering—“I shot you on purpose, Edward!”
“What!” he said, springing from his chair; “you tried to murder me?”
“Yes, yes; but don’t think too hardly of me. I am only flesh and blood, and you drove me wild with jealousy—you taunted me with having been your mistress and said that I was not fit to associate with the lady whom you were going to marry. It made me mad, and the opportunity offered—the gun was there, and I shot you. God forgive me, I think that I have suffered more than you did. Oh! when day after day I saw you lying there and did not know if you would live or die, I thought that I should have gone mad with remorse and agony!”
He listened so far, and then suddenly walked across the room towards the bell. She placed herself between him and it.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“Going to do? I am going to send for a policeman and give you into custody for attempted murder, that is all.”