"Yes—Pierce Armitage. Did you know him?"
He looked at her with eyes in which there was a strange horror.
"Know him? He was my best friend!"
She shrugged her shoulders, and a slight weary smile parted her lips.
"Well, you never told me,—I have never heard you mention his name. But the world is a small place!—and when I was a girl he was beginning to be known by a good many people. Anyhow, he threw up everything in the way of his art and work, and ran away with me. I went quite willingly—I took a maid whom we bribed,—we pretended we were married, and we had a charming time together—a time of real romance, till he began to get tired and want change—all men are like that! Then he became a bore with a bad temper. He certainly behaved very well when he knew the child was coming, and offered to marry me in real earnest—but I refused."
"You refused!" Lord Blythe echoed the words in a kind of stupefied wonderment.
"Of course I did. He was quite poor—and I should have been miserable running about the world with a man who depended on art for a living. Besides he was ceasing to be a lover—and as a husband he would have been insupportable. We managed everything very well—my own people were all in India—and my mother's friend, if she guessed my affair, said nothing about it,—wisely enough for her own sake!—so that when my time came I was able to go away on an easy pretext and get it all over secretly. Pierce came and stayed in a hotel close at hand—he was rather in a fright lest I should die!—it would have been such an awkward business for him!—however, all went well, and when I had quite recovered he took the child away from me, and left it at an old farmhouse he had once made a drawing of, saying he would call back for it—as if it were a parcel!" She laughed lightly. "He wrote and told me what he had done and gave me the address of the farm—then he went abroad, and I never heard of him again—"
"He died," interposed Lord Blythe, slowly—"He died—alone and very poor—"
"So I was told," she rejoined, indifferently—"Oh yes! I see you look at me as if you thought I had no heart! Perhaps I have not,—I used to have something like one,—your friend Armitage killed it in me. Anyhow, I knew the child had been adopted by the farm people as their own, and I took no further trouble. My parents came home from India to inherit an unexpected fortune, and they took me about with them a great deal—they were never told of my romantic escapade!—then I met you—and you married me."
A sigh broke from him, but he said nothing.