Clara felt herself grow sick and pale at this degrading question; but she asked with much apparent calmness:
"And, pray, who may your husband be, girl, that I should know aught of him?"
"Mr. Derval Hampton of the ship Amethyst, who, I understand, engaged himself to you, while knowing well that I—his lawful wife, whom he left to starve—was living! I don't blame you, Miss," she continued, weeping to all appearance, for she could act her part well and professionally, "for you knew no better; but, thank heaven, I come in time to save you and unmask him!"
There ensued a pause now—but a pause in which Clara could hear the beating of her heart, and then she asked:
"When, and where, were you married?"
"In London, Miss, and just after his last voyage; Captain Talbot knows me well, and so does his brother Mr. Rookleigh."
"And why did he leave you?" asked Clara, with a strange and husky voice.
"Because I am poor; he despised me as soon as he knew you, and used to go off with you in a boat on the bay, and leave me to break my heart weeping on the shore; for many a time I saw you both. For what was I but a toy to be played with, and cast aside when he was tired of me; but I am his wedded wife, as this ring and the register can testify!"
The stroller played her part to perfection, with every word planting a knife in the heart of the shrinking listener; and deeming that now she had said and done enough by the few details she threw in to convince the latter that she had been cruelly deceived, Miss Trix sobbed heavily, bowed herself out, and quitted Bayview Villa with all speed, considering that the character she had taken in this "cast" was—in a monetary sense—the best engagement she had ever made.
Clara sat long in the dusk as if turned to stone, but not a tear escaped her. This sudden revelation of Derval's supposed perfidy could not give her now the pain it might have done in time past; his conduct had partly prepared her for some such catastrophe as this; and yet how antagonistic—how unlike his open, gentle, candid, and earnest outward character, did this accumulation of secret perfidy seem!