"Wait!" he said. "You are Aspasia—and Rose's wife?"
"It is new to you," she returned wildly, "but I have thought of nothing else for two months. I knew he was your brother. What did it avail? I wrote to you—to your hotel in Paris."
She stopped, gazing at him, and twisting her fingers together. He began to understand what she was saying, what her presence here, in his brother's house, meant, what this was that had happened to them.
"I never had your letter," he said stupidly. "You pledged yourself to me."
She answered in a feverish haste.
"I know. Had I refused my father he would have killed me—yes, killed me! He said he would send me to Bedlam." She dropped into the chair that stood stiffly against the opposite wall. "It seemed, too, that you must know—that you did not care."
Marius stumbled towards her, stooped and took her bare cold hands in his, as he had once held them, gloved and warm, under the spring trees in the garden of the Luxembourg.
"So you were Miss Lavinia Hilton, and now are Rose's wife?" he said, in a hollow voice. "I understand."
She turned up her face to his, and her slim bosom panted desperately under the dark gown.
"My father sent for me very soon after we parted. He was terrible—and now it is done." A look of hopelessness came over her countenance. She rose to her feet, their hands still clinging together.