"You cannot tell me! There is upwards of a year missing from your life; and you cannot tell me, your betrothed husband, what you did with that year?"
"I cannot."
"Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never be my wife."
He thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her lips in a passionate torrent of angry words; but she rose from her chair, and, tottering towards him, fell upon her knees at his feet. No other action could have struck such terror to his heart. It seemed to him a confession of guilt. But what guilt? what guilt? What was the dark secret of this young creature's brief life?
"Talbot Bulstrode," she said, in a tremulous voice, which cut him to the soul,—"Talbot Bulstrode, Heaven knows how often I have foreseen and dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, I should have anticipated this explanation. But I thought—I thought the occasion might never come; or that when it did come you would be generous—and—trust me. If you can trust me, Talbot; if you can believe that this secret is not utterly shameful——"
"Not utterly shameful!" he cried. "O God! Aurora, that I should ever hear you talk like this! Do you think there are any degrees in these things? There must be no secret between my wife and me; and the day that a secret, or the shadow of one, arises between us, must see us part for ever. Rise from your knees, Aurora; you are killing me with this shame and humiliation. Rise from your knees; and if we are to part this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity's sake, that I have no need to despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has scarcely been manly."
She did not obey him, but sank lower in her half-kneeling, half-crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands, and only the coils of her black hair visible to Captain Bulstrode.
"I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot," she said, in a half-stifled voice. "Have pity upon me."
"Pity!" echoed the captain; "pity! Why do you not ask me for justice? One question, Aurora Floyd; one more question; perhaps the last I ever may ask of you. Does your father know why you left that school, and where you were during that twelvemonth?"
"He does."