“I am very sorry I ever mentioned Cheriton to you, Mr. Dalbrook,” she said impatiently. “It was a foolish impulse that made me talk. You insist upon making guesses. You try to force a confession from me. It is hardly generous.”
“My interest in you must be my excuse.”
“You can do me no good by that kind of interest. I shall never see Dorsetshire again—so what can it matter who I was when I lived in that part of the world. There are hundreds of women in London as lonely as I am—hundreds—perhaps thousands—who have broken every link with their past. My life suits me well enough, and I am contented. I shall never try to change it.”
“That is a pity. You are young enough to make a good wife to an honest man, to help in creating a happy home.”
“Am I? I feel a century old; and I have done with every thought of love or marriage. When I woke to consciousness after that dreadful fever, awoke from darkness and oblivion like that of the grave, I entered upon a new life. I came out of that sickness like one who had passed through hell. Passion and hope, and youth and good looks, had been burnt out of me in a fiery furnace. It was a wonder to myself that my body was alive. It was no wonder to me that my heart was dead. From that time I have lived very much as I am living now—after a brief time of struggle and starvation—and the life suits me fairly well. I shall never seek to better it.”
“That is hard, Marian.”
He called her by her Christian name, frankly, in almost paternal friendliness, not knowing any other name by which to call her.
He was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the occasion of her next tea-drinking, so early as to be before anybody else, and he talked to his hostess about Marian—Marian Gray, Miss Newton called her,—confiding to her his conviction that this young woman was no other than Mrs. Porter’s missing daughter. He told her of his interview with Mrs. Porter, and of the mother’s angry repudiation of her child.
“I can but think that her hardness was assumed,” he said, “and that the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and daughter could be brought together. I should like to try the experiment.”
“It is hardly wise to try experiments with human hearts,” said Miss Newton. “Marian is contented and at peace, if not happy. To force her back upon a mother who might be hard and bitter to her—do you think that would be true kindness?”