If his resolution had waned at sight of the sleeper, it was fixed again when he returned to his chair in the outer room. He raised his head from his folded arms when he heard Philip and Sarah approaching, but did not otherwise alter his position. The low tone of their parting words—one soon learned by the sojourners in hotels and watering-places, where thin partitions and ventilators abound—was, to him, the cautiously repressed voice of affectionate good-nights. But one clause was distinct—"What will Hammond say, when he hears the story?" They jested thus of him, then. One of them, at least, should learn ere long what he would say.
"Lewis, you here!"
Sarah changed color with amazement and vague alarm—emotion that paralyzed her momentarily. Then, as she discerned the tokens of disorder in his dress and countenance, she hurried forward.
"What has brought you so unexpectedly? Are you sick? Has anything happened?"
He did not rise; and, resting her hand on his shoulder, she stooped for a kiss. But his stern gaze never moved from hers—anxious and inquiring—and his lips were like stone.
"Lewis, speak to me! If you have dreadful news to tell me, for pity's sake, do not keep me in suspense!"
"I have nothing to say that will be new to you," he said, without relaxing his hard, cold manner, "and not a great deal that ought to have been kept back from me when I wished to marry you, believing that you had a heart to give me with your hand."
As if struck in the face, Sarah sank back into a chair, speechless and trembling.
"Yes! had you been sincere with me then, grieved and disappointed as I would have felt, I would have respected you the more, and loved you none the less for the disclosure. But when, after a year and a half of married life, I learn that the woman I have loved and trusted with my whole soul—from whom I have never concealed a thought that it could interest her to know—has all the while been playing a false part—vowing at the altar to love me and me alone, when she secretly idolized another; bearing my name, living beneath my roof, sleeping in my bosom—yet thinking of, and caring for him, treasuring his keepsakes as the most precious of her possessions—is it strange that, when the tongue of a vulgar gossip proclaims my shame in my hearing, and other evidence proves what I thought was his vile slander to be true as gospel—is it strange, I say, that I am incensed at the deception practised upon me—at the infamous outrage of my dearest hopes—my most holy feelings?"
She threw herself at his feet, clasped his knees, and implored him, chokingly, to "forgive" her. "Oh! if you knew what I have suffered!"