Only his name, and the ice was broken. The next instant she had burst into passionate tears, and was hiding her face against the rusty insensible railings, anywhere, only to be out of his sight.
Her whole frame was shaken by those sobs. He could not but perceive, he could not even pretend not to perceive, her distress.
‘Forgive me,’ he said gently. ‘I am more than sorry that I came, if my presence grieves you. I ought not to have come, but,’ he faltered a little here, ‘respect for you, regard for my cousin, made it impossible for me to refuse.’
‘Respect for me!’ she exclaimed bitterly, lifting up her head, and choking down her sobs with a desperate effort, just as she had held herself back from unconsciousness a few moments before. ‘Respect for me—for a woman whom you could believe a poisoner!’
‘Beatrix, I never believed——’ he began.
‘You did not believe me innocent, or you would not have forsaken me,’ she said, confronting him with eyes that kindled as she spoke.
He could not gainsay her. She had spoken truth. No, not if all the world had been against her, not at the scaffold’s foot, could he have abandoned her, could he honestly have believed her guiltless.
But now that he stood face to face with her, now that he saw that noble countenance, the splendid indignation of those eyes, he was as convinced of her innocence as if he had never doubted her. His past doubts seemed madness, or worse than madness, diabolical possession.
‘If I had spoken with you after your father’s death,’ he said, ‘if we had met face to face as we meet now, I should never have gone away. I would have borne the hardest things men could say of me, that I had married you for the sake of your fortune—that I had been unscrupulous because you were rich. I would have laughed such poisoned arrows to scorn for your dear sake.’
‘You left me,’ she said, growing colder as he grew warm, gaining strength and firmness as he showed himself weak. ‘You left me. That is all. Perhaps you really never cared for me. Indeed, I have some reason to know there was some one else you secretly preferred.’