“Is it not an insult,” she answered with a sort of sob, “when a woman to her shame and sorrow has confessed—what I have—to bid her console herself by marriage with another man?”
“Now that you put it thus, I confess that perhaps some minds might so interpret an intention which did not exist. It seemed to me that, after a while, in marriage you would most easily forget a trouble which my son so unworthily has brought on you.”
“Don’t blame him for he does not deserve it. If anybody is to blame it is I; but in truth all those stories are false; we have neither of us done anything.”
“Do not press the point, Miss Fregelius; I believe you.”
“We have neither of us done anything,” she repeated; “and, what is more, if you had not interfered, I do not think that I should have found out the truth; or, at least, not yet—till I saw him married, perhaps, when it would have been no matter.”
“When you see a man walking in his sleep you do your best to stop him,” said the Colonel.
“And so cause him to fall over the precipice and be dashed to bits. Oh! you should have let me finish my journey. Then I should have come back to the bed that I have made to lie on, and waked to find myself alone, and nobody would have been hurt except myself who caused the evil.”
The Colonel could not continue this branch of the conversation. Even to him, a hardened vessel, as he had defined himself, it was too painful.
“You said you mean to earn a living in London. How?”
“By my voice and violin, if one can sing and play with a sore heart. I have an old aunt, a sister of my father’s, who is a music mistress, with whom I daresay I can arrange to live, and who may be able to get me some introductions.”