She was not left to wonder long. On the evening of the day on which Dudleigh had made his last visit Wiggins came to see her. She had not seen him since that time when he had brought her the so-called letter of Miss Plympton, except once when she had caught a glimpse of him when riding with Mowbray. He now entered in his usual manner, with his solemn face, his formal bow, his abstracted gaze. He sat down, and for a few moments said nothing.
“I do not often inflict my presence on you, Miss Dalton,” said he at length. “I have too much regard for you to intrude upon you. Some day you will understand me, and will appreciate my present course. It is only for your own sake that I now come, because I see that you are thoughtless and reckless, and are living under a delusion. You are almost beyond my control, yet I still hope that I may have some faint influence over you—or at least I can try.”
His tone was gentle and affectionate. It was, in fact, paternal in its character; but this tone, instead of softening Edith, only seemed to her a fresh instance of his arrogant assumption, and, as such, excited her contempt and indignation. These feelings, however, she repressed for the moment, and looked at him with a cold and austere face.
“You have been receiving visitors,” he continued, “visitors whom I could have kept away if I had—chosen. But to do so would have interfered with my plans, and so I have tolerated them. You, however, have been all along under such a—mistake—about me—and my intentions—that you have thrown yourself upon these strangers, and have, I grieve to say, endangered your own future, and mine, more than you can possibly imagine. Your first visitor was objectionable, but I tolerated him for reasons that I need not explain; but this last visitor is one who ought not to be tolerated either by you or by me. And now I come to you to give you—a—an affectionate warning—to ask of you not to be so reckless, so careless of your best interests, so blind to the great issues that are at stake in—a—my—present plans.”
“You appear to me,” said Edith, coldly “to have some reference to Lieutenant Dudleigh.”
“That is what he calls himself.”
“Calls himself?”
“Yes. This name Dudleigh is an assumed one. He took that so as to gain your confidence.”
“You appear to know him very well.”
“I do not.”