Still I did not answer. After a time she said—
"I do not wish to dissuade you; indeed, I cannot myself see how you can get out of this most mistaken engagement, for the man has behaved well, and I am the first to acknowledge that; but has it ever occurred to you that you do a man an absolute and terrible injustice when you marry him, loving with all your heart and soul another man? Do you think it is fair to him? Don't you think he ought at least to know this?"
"I am sure Albert Fanning ought not to know it," I replied, "and I earnestly hope no one will ever tell him. By the time I marry him I shall have"—my lips trembled, I said the words with an effort—"I shall have got over this, at least to a great extent; and oh! he must not know. Yes, I will see Jim to-night, for I agree with you that it is necessary that I should tell him myself, but not again," I continued; "you won't ask me to see him again after to-night?"
"You had much better not," she replied; she looked at me very gravely, and then she went away. Poor Jasmine, she was too restless to stay much with me. She was, I could see, terribly hurt, but she had not been gone an hour before the Duchess came bustling in. She was very motherly and very good, and she reminded me of my own dear mother. She sat near me, and began to talk. She had heard the whole story. She was terribly shocked, she could not make it out. She could not bring herself to realise that her god-daughter was going to marry a man like Albert Fanning.
"You ought never to have done it, West, never, never," she kept repeating.
At last I interrupted her.
"There is another side to this question," I said; "you think I did something mean and shabby when I promised to marry a man like Albert Fanning. You think I have done something unworthy of your god-daughter, but don't you really, really believe that you would have a much poorer, more contemptible, more worthless sort of god-daughter if she were now to break her bond to the man who saved her mother at considerable expense—the man who was so good, so kind, so faithful? Would you really counsel me to break my bond?"
"No, I would not," said the Duchess, "but I would do one thing, I would up and tell that man the truth. I would put the thing before him and let him decide. Upon my word, that's a very good idea. That's what I would do, Westenra."
"I will not tell him," I replied. "I have promised to marry him on the 1st of June next year. He knows well that I do not love him, but I will keep my bond."
"That is all very fine," said the Duchess. "You may have told him that you do not love him, but you have not told him that you love another man."