Ida May drew back in terror from the upraised hand.
"Hold!" cried Eugene Mallard, stepping between them. "No matter what this poor creature has done, she is, in the eyes of God and man, my wife!"
By a dexterous movement he had raised the poor girl from her knees, and had swung her out of the reach of the blow that had been meant for her. Despite his anguish, it aroused all the pity and chivalry in his nature to see how the poor thing clung to him in her terror.
"Save me from her wrath," she murmured, clinging to him with death-cold hands, and adding vehemently: "Believe me, it was all a horrible mistake! I saw your picture, and—and I mistook you for another. The church was so dimly lighted, I—I could not see, and I did not know the terrible mistake until—until it was too late! Oh, tell me, tell me, what can I do to undo the great wrong that I have done you?"
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
Eugene Mallard had sunk into the nearest seat, covering his face with his hands. The horror of the situation had just come to him. By the cruel working of fate he had been wedded to one woman through a horrible mistake, while his heart and soul were another's.
It seemed to him like some horrible dream from which he must soon awake. He had parted from Hildegarde full of hope and love, scarcely an hour before, saying to himself, as he turned and looked back at her, that ere the sun would rise and set again, she would be his own, that they would never be parted from each other after that. And now a barrier had suddenly risen between them which parted them just as surely as though one of them lay in the grave.
His whole soul was bound up in Hildegarde; yet he was wedded to another. It seemed to him that the anguish of it was more than he could bear.
Then came to him the thought that he must protect the woman he had wedded—this poor young creature who still clung to him, imploring him to save her from Miss Fernly's wrath, repeating to him, over and over again, that it was a mistake.