Lally slowly arose and moved toward the door, but coming quite near to her stupefied young husband.
“It is I—Lally,” she said, with the simplicity of a child, her great black eyes staring at him piteously. “I am not dead, Rufus. It was not I who was drowned in the Thames. I know that you are going to be married again to a great heiress, and I hope you will be happy with her; but she will never love you as I loved you. Good-bye, dear—good-bye forever!”
With a great sob Lally flitted past him, and hurried out to the waiting carriage. Rufus dashed after her, wild-eyed and wild-visaged; but Mrs. Peters grasped him vigorously by the arm, detaining him.
“None of that!” she ejaculated harshly. “I won’t have my young lady tampered with. You shan’t follow her. You’ve broken her heart already.”
“She’s mine—my wife!” cried Rufus, still amazed, but in an ecstasy of joy and rapture. “I tell you she’s mine. I thought she was dead. I am not engaged to an heiress. I won’t marry one. I want my wife—”
“You’re too late, sir,” said Mrs. Peters grimly. “You should have made up your mind to that effect at the time you abandoned her.”
“But I was compelled to abandon her! God alone knows the remorse and anguish I have known since I supposed her dead. I love her better than all the world. How is it that she lives? Why does she wear mourning? Woman let me go to her!” And he tried to break from the detaining grasp of Peters.
“No, sir,” said the woman still more grimly. “If you have a spark of manliness, you will let the young lady alone. She hates you now. I assure you she does. She’s only a governess, and you’ll lose her her place if you hang around her. I tell you again she hates you.”
Rufus uttered a low moan, and sat down abruptly upon a shop bench. Mrs. Peters glided out and entered the carriage, giving the order to return home.
“I told him a lie, God forgive me!” she muttered, as she looked at Lally, who lay back upon the cushions, faint and white. “I told him that you were a governess, Miss Lally. Let him once get wind of your good fortune, and he’ll abandon his heiress and come back to you. Let us start for the north to-night, dear Miss Lally, and you will not see him if he comes to Mount street. We can take the night express, and sleep comfortably with our lap robes, and to-morrow night we will sleep at Edinburgh.”