Herbert still faced the back of the lounge, but he had slipped his hand from the relaxing hold of hers, and pressed it over his eyes. She could not seek to possess herself of it again. Winston was not the only dupe of the nefarious fraud, the betrayal of which had overtaken the guilty pair thus late in their career of duplicity. Yet, however severely she had suffered in heart from their falsehood and her brother's intolerance, no stain would rest upon her name, while, terminate as the affair might, the disgraceful revelation would shipwreck her brother's happiness for life, if not bring upon the old homestead a storm of scandal that would leave no more trace of the honorable reputation heretofore borne by its owners than remained of the smiling plenty of the cities of the plain after the fiery wrath of the Lord had overthrown them.
Mrs. Aylett resumed the suspended operation of cutting the leaves of her new monthly; fluttered them to be certain that none were overlooked; laid down the periodical; brushed the scattered bits of paper from her silken skirt, and retaining the paper-knife—a costly toy of mother-of-pearl and silver—changed her position so as to look her husband directly in the eye.
“I believe I can give you the information you lack,” she said, in curiously constrained accents, the concentration of some feeling to which she could or would not grant other vent. “Clara Louise Lennox obtained a divorce from her first husband on the grounds of drunkenness, failure to maintain her, infidelity, and personal ill-usage. He came home from sea, as you have said, the battered ruin of a MAN, fallen beyond hope of redemption. There was no law, written or moral, which obliged her, when once freed from it, to carry about with her and thrust upon the notice of others the loathsome body of death typified by his name and her matronly title. She commenced life anew at her father's death, contrary, let me say to the advice of all her friends, if I except the mother, who could refuse nothing to her favorite daughter. The scheme was boldly conceived. You have admitted that it was successfully carried out. In New York the family were not known beyond the circle with which they disdained to associate when the lodging-house business was abandoned. There were a thousand chances to one that in her new abode Miss Dorrance would be identified by some busybody with the divorced Mrs. Lennox. She risked her fortunes upon the one chance, and won. I do not expect you to believe that the impostor was moved by any other consideration in contracting her second marriage than the wish to seek the more exalted sphere of society and influence which Fate had hitherto denied her. You would sneer were I to hint, however remotely, at a regard for her high-born suitor the dashing, but dissipated officer had never awakened—”
Mr. Aylett lifted his hand, smiling more evilly than before.
“Excuse the interruption! but after your statement of the fact that such sentimental asseverations would be futile, you waste time in recapitulating the loves of the lady aforementioned, and we in hearing them. I think I express the opinion of the audience—fit, but few—when I say that we require no other evidence than that afforded by the story I have told of Mrs. Lennox's susceptibility and capacity for affection. We are willing to take for granted that the latter was illimitable.”
“As you like!" idly tapping the nails of her left hand with the knife. “Is there anything else pertaining to this history into which you would like to inquire?”
It was a sight to curdle the blood about one's heart, this duel between husband and wife, with double-edged blades, wreathed with flowers. Mr. Aylett's attitude of lazy indifference was not exceeded by Clara's proud languor. He laughed a little at the last question.
“I have speculated somewhat—having nothing else in particular to engage my mind on my way home—upon the point I named just now, and upon one other akin to it. All that the novel needs to round it off neatly is an encounter between the real and the quasi consorts. I cannot specify them by name, in consequence of the uncertainty I have mentioned. One was a bona-fide husband—the other a bogus article, let New York divorce laws decide what they will, provided always that the fallen Julius had not bidden farewell to this lower earth before his loyal Louise plighted her faith to her Southern gallant. Death is the Alexander of the universe. There is no retying the knots he has cut.”
From the pertinacity with which he returned to the question one could discern his actual anxiety to have it settled. Mabel understood that the only salve of possible application to his outraged pride and love was the discovery that Clara had been really a widow when he wedded her. The divorce and subsequent deception were sins of heinous dye against his ideas of respectability and unspotted honor, but he would never forgive the woman who had had two living husbands, freed from the former though she was by a legal fiction.
No one saw this more clearly than did she whose fate trembled upon the next words she should utter. With all her hardihood, she hesitated to reply. Luxury, wealth, and station were on one side; degradation and poverty on the other. The solitary hope of reinstatement in the affection, if not the esteem, of him she loved truly as it was in her to love anything beside herself, was arrayed against the certainty of alienation and the tearful odds of ignominious banishment.