And her husband’s manner: his refusal to tell her the history of his first marriage; his reticence, his secrecy—reticence so out of harmony with his boldly truthful nature; the gloom upon his face when she forced him to speak of that past life: all these things came back upon her with appalling force, and even trifles assumed a direful significance.
“O, my beloved! what was that dark story, and why did you leave me to hear it from such false lips as those?”
And then with passionate tears she thought how easy it would have been to forgive and pity even a tale of guilt—unpremeditated guilt, doubtless, fatality rather than crime—if her husband had laid his weary head upon her breast and told her all; holding back nothing; confident in the strength of a great love to understand and to pardon. How much easier would it have been to bear the burden of a guilty secret, so shared, in the supreme trustfulness of her husband’s love! How light a burden compared with this which was laid upon her! this horror of groping backward into the black night of the past.
“I must know the worst,” she said to herself; “I will test that scoundrel’s accusation. I must know all. I will take no step to injure my dear love. I will seek no help, trust no friend. I must act alone.”
Then came a more agonising thought of the hapless wife—the victim.
“My sister! What was your fate? I must know.”
Her thoughts came back always to that point—“I must know all.”
She recalled the image of that unacknowledged sister, the face bending over her bed when she started up out of a feverish dream, frightened and in tears, to take instant comfort from that loving presence, to fling her arms round Fay’s neck, and nestle upon her bosom. Never had that sisterly love failed her. The quiet watcher was always near. A sigh, a faint little murmur, and the volunteer nurse was at her side. Often on waking she had found Fay sitting by her bed, in the dead of the night, motionless and watchful, sleepless from loving care.
Her love for Fay had been one of the strongest feelings of her life. She, who had been ever dutiful to the frivolous, capricious mother, had yet unconsciously given a stronger affection to the companion who had loved her with an unselfish love, which the mother had never shown. Her regard for Fay had been the one romance of her childhood, and had continued the strongest sentiment of her mind until the hour when, for the first time, she knew the deeper love of womanhood, and gave her heart to George Greswold.
And now these two supreme affections rose up before her in dreadful conflict; and in the sister so faithfully loved and so fondly regretted she saw the victim of her still dearer husband.