"Why did she leave this place? God help you, Olivia Marchmont, if it was your cruelty that drove her away!"
The widow took no notice of the threat implied in these words. Was there anything upon earth that she feared now? No––nothing. Had she not endured the worst long ago, in Edward Arundel's contempt? She had no fear of a battle with this man; or with any other creature in the world; or with the whole world arrayed and banded together against her, if need were. Amongst all the torments of those black depths to which her soul had gone down, there was no such thing as fear. That cowardly baseness is for the happy and prosperous, who have something to lose. This woman was by nature dauntless and resolute as the hero of some classic story; but in her despair she had the desperate and reckless courage of a starving wolf. The hand of death was upon her; what could it matter how she died?
"I am very grateful to you, Edward Arundel," she said, bitterly, "for the good opinion you have always had of me. The blood of the Dangerfield Arundels must have had some drop of poison intermingled with it, I should think, before it could produce so vile a creature as myself; and yet I have heard people say that my mother was a good woman."
The young man writhed impatiently beneath the torture of his cousin's deliberate speech. Was there to be no end to this unendurable delay? Even now,––now that he was in this house, face to face with the woman he had come to question––it seemed as if he could not get tidings of his wife.
So, often in his dreams, he had headed a besieging–party against the Affghans, with the scaling–ladders reared against the wall; he had seen the dark faces grinning down upon him––all savage glaring eyes and fierce glistening teeth––and had heard the voices of his men urging him on to the encounter, but had felt himself paralysed and helpless, with his sabre weak as a withered reed in his nerveless hand.
"For God's sake, let there be no quarrelling with phrases between you and me, Olivia!" he cried. "If you or any other living being have injured my wife, the reckoning between us shall be no light one. But there will be time enough to talk of that by–and–by. I stand before you, newly risen from a grave in which I have lain for more than three months, as dead to the world, and to every creature I have ever loved or hated, as if the Funeral Service had been read over my coffin. I come to demand from you an account of what has happened during that interval. If you palter or prevaricate with me, I shall know that it is because you fear to tell me the truth."
"Fear!"
"Yes; you have good reason to fear, if you have wronged Mary Arundel. Why did she leave this house?"
"Because she was not happy in it, I suppose. She chose to shut herself up in her own room, and to refuse to be governed, or advised, or consoled. I tried to do my duty to her; yes," cried Olivia Marchmont, suddenly raising her voice, as if she had been vehemently contradicted;––"yes, I did try to do my duty to her. I urged her to listen to reason; I begged her to abandon her foolish falsehood about a marriage with you in London."
"You disbelieved in that marriage?"