Andrew shifted his seat a little, crossed the other leg, and said, "Go on."
"Not much to tell. I loved her; she said that she loved me. So--we were engaged to be married. She came here on a visit--she and a friend of hers--and I was very frank with her; told her this must be her home, that our life would be easy, but not luxurious, and she answered, 'It was enough. She cared nothing for Courts, and was only in the suite of the Duchess at her father's desire.'" He paused a moment, then he repeated, "We were engaged to be married."
"Humph!" said Andrew.
"Engaged to be married--the day was fixed. Then--then--oh! Andrew, I never heard from her nor saw her again."
"What had befallen?" asked his brother, gazing, as it seemed, almost listlessly out at the laburnum branches swaying against the diamond panes. "What?"
"Treachery of the deepest, blackest kind. I could have borne very well that she should not love me, but that she should treat me thus--flout and despise me, leave me without a word of regret--that I cannot bear. It has broken my heart."
"Did it do that?" and Andrew's voice was low--thick--as he asked the question.
"Ay, it did. I learnt afterwards from the friend who came with her here, also from her father--who cursed her name as I stood before him in his Dorsetshire home, to which I had gone to seek for her--that for some time, some weeks, she had been much with a Frenchman, a man who had come over with the woman now made Duchess of Portsmouth; that soon 'twas thought they were lovers. And then, one day, they were gone--to France."
"Her name?" asked Andrew, briefly.
"Marion Wyatt."