"Indeed, you do me justice!" cried she, with renewed energy.
He continued, feeling that he must be stern in words as well as in purpose if he would really rescue her from herself. "Think, then, should I yield to the influence of your beauty, and sink your respected name to a level with those"—and he pointed to a group of wretched women assembled at the corner of Pall-Mall. "Think, where would be the price of your innocence? I being no longer worthy of your esteem, you would hate yourself; and we should continue together, two guilty creatures, abhorring each other, and justly despised by a virtuous world."
Lady Sara sat as one dumb, and did not inarticulate any sound—except the groan of horror which had shot through her when she had glanced at those women—until the coach stopped in James's Place.
"Go in with me," were all the words she could utter, while, pulling her veil over her face, she gave him her hand to assist her down the steps.
"Is Captain Ross arrived?" asked Thaddeus of a servant, who, to his great joy, replied in the negative. During the drive, he had alarmed himself by anticipating the disagreeable suspicions which might rise in the mind of the husband should he see his wife in her present strange and distracted state.
When Thaddeus seated Lady Sara in her drawing room, he offered to take a respectful leave; but she laid one hand on his arm, whilst with the other she covered her convulsed features, and said, "Constantine, before you go, before we part perhaps eternally, O! tell me that you do not, even now, hate me!—that you do not hate me!" repeated she, in a firmer tone; "I know too well how deeply I am despised."
"Cease, ah, cease these vehement self-reproaches!" returned he, tenderly replacing her on the sofa. "Shame does not depend on possessing passions, but in yielding to them. You have conquered yours, dear Lady Sara; and in future I must respect and love you like a sister of my heart."
"Noble Constantine! there is no guile in thee," exclaimed she, straining his hand to her lips. "May Heaven bless you wherever you go!"
He dropped on his knees, imprinted on both her hands a true brother's sacred kiss, and, hastily rising, was quitting the room without a word, when he heard, in a short, low sound from her voice, "O, why had I not a mother, a sister, to love and pity me! Should I have been such a wretch as now?"
Thaddeus turned from the door at the tone and substance of this apparently unconsciously uttered apostrophe. She was standing with her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed on the ground. By an irresistible impulse he approached her. "Lady Sara," said he, with a tender reverence in his voice, "there is penitence and prayer to a better Parent in those words! Look up to Him, and He will save you from yourself, and bless you in your husband."