“No, no; oh, heaven, no! I never dreamed of that; and I must have heard the name too, but forgot it again, everything was so horrible. Roy’s house, and I was to be his wife to-morrow!”
She rocked to and fro in her anguish, while the man confronting her began at last to pity her; to wish vaguely that he had staid among the heather hills of Scotland, or at least had not shown himself to her. But anon, another woman’s face arose before his mind, the woman for whom he had risked this interview, and he ceased to care so much for wounding Georgie, though his manner was conciliatory, and he spoke kindly and respectfully as he went on:
“I wondered at the engagement if you did know; and wondered too if he had ever heard of me as connected with you.”
“Never, never! and Henry, oh Henry!” she stretched her hands toward him now, and the expression of her white face was pitiful in the extreme; “whatever you do or make me suffer, don’t subject me to that; don’t let him know. I have lost him, but I cannot lose his esteem. Roy must not despise me. I wronged you once; I know I wronged you in the tenderest point where a woman can wrong a man, but I meant to be a good wife, and would have been if you had forgiven and tried me. You would not do that; you thrust me from you, and though I have seen much of prosperity, there has been a skeleton in every joy. I have been fearfully punished every way. Annie is dead, did you know that?”
She said the last humbly, beseechingly, and a flush of red crept into her white face.
“I supposed she was. I saw the name of Annie Heyford on a stone in Greenwood, close by Le Roy’s grave. And Mr. Leighton never knew of her either, I suppose?”
“Not what she was to me. Nobody knows but Jack and you,” she answered mournfully, while a sudden flame of passion leaped into the one sound eye of the man beside her, as he said:
“Up to your old tricks again, I see; marrying with a lie on your soul, just as you came to me.”
She did not resent the taunt at all. She was too thoroughly crushed for that, and she answered gently, “Yes, I was going to do the same thing again. I am everything that is bad, I confess; but, oh, how could I tell, when all these years nobody has known, and I was so different, and the old life lay far behind, and I did love Roy. Oh, if I’ve sinned deeply, I am cruelly punished at the last. Think, Henry, to-morrow, ay, to-day, for it is to-morrow now, I was to have been his wife; everything is in readiness, the guests are here, and now it cannot be, and I,—oh, what reason can I give to Roy for holding back at the very altar?”
“What reason? No reason. Why should you hold back? Marry him just the same. I shall not interfere. I did not come for that. I came for money, and took this time in order to get what I want. I thought I hated you, but upon my soul, I don’t. I am sorry for you, to see you feel so bad, but there’s no cause for it. Swallow your conscience a little lower down. Act a bigger lie, and all will be right; for I tell you I am not here to claim any right I may have had in you. I dreamed you were dead. I’ll be honest and say I hoped it was true, for over the sea among the heather hills is a little blue-eyed, brown-haired Scotch lassie whom I call Janet, and who thinks she is my wife. There are also two children in the home-nest; mine, too, as well as hers,” he added, and again that red flush of shame crept into Georgie’s face, while the stranger continued; “I tried to reform over there for her sake. She is pure and good, and she loves me, and the fraud I practise upon her cuts me sometimes to the quick, and when I dreamed you were dead so many times I got to hoping you were, for then I’d do her justice. So I came to see, and tracked you out, and found you on the topmost pinnacle, and felt angry when I saw your silks and satins and jewels and remembered Janet’s two dresses, one for every day and one for Sunday, and thought of my little boy Johnnie, who might be cured if I had the money. We are poor, very poor, and Janet thinks I am making my fortune here in America, for I told her it was for her sake and the bairns’ I came, and she is waiting for me so anxiously, and I am going to her soon; within a week at the farthest, but cannot go empty-handed. I did not enter that house on the mountain-road, as you probably think I did. I know nothing of the robbers. I quit such things after my escape from prison, and since I have known Janet I have tried to be honest and decent. I have been hanging about in this neighborhood for two weeks or more, trying to make up my mind whether to seek an interview with you and risk detection or not. I saved your life and Mr. Leighton’s too, but did not know when I seized the horses who was in the carriage. If I had, I should have done the same, though your death would make Janet an honest woman, for by finding some flaw in our first marriage ceremony I should coax her to go through with it again over the border in England.”