The voice which said “Come in” did not sound like Rossie’s at all, nor did the little girl sitting in the chair look much like the Rossie he had last seen, flushed with health and happiness, and the light of a great joy shining in the eyes which now turned so eagerly toward him as he came in. On the stairs outside there was the rustling of skirts, and he heard it, and involuntarily slid the bolt of the door, and then swiftly crossed to where Rossie’s face was upturned to his with a smile of welcome, and Rossie’s hands were both outstretched to him as she said:
“Oh, Mr. Everard, I am glad you have come; we have wanted you so much.”
He had thought she would meet him with coldness and scorn for his weakness and duplicity, and he was prepared for that, but not for this; and forgetting himself utterly for the moment, he took the offered hands and held them tightly in his own, until she released them from him and motioned him to a seat opposite her, where he could look into her face, which, now that he saw it more closely, had on it such a grieved, disappointed expression that he cried out:
“Kill me, Rossie, if you will! but don’t look at me that way, for I cannot bear it. I know what I’ve done and what I am, better than you do.”
Here he paused, and Rossie said:
“I am sorry, Everard, that you did not tell me long ago, when it first happened. Four years and more, she says. I’ve been thinking it over, and it must have been that time you came home when your mother died and you were so sick afterward. You were married then.”
How quietly and naturally she spoke the words “married then,” as if it was nothing to her that he was married then or now, but the hot blood flamed up for a moment in her face and then left it whiter than before, as Everard replied:
“Yes, if that can be called a marriage which was a mere farce, and has brought nothing but bitter humiliation to me, and been the cause of my ruin. I wish that day had been blotted from my existence.”
“Hush, Everard,” Rossie said. “You must not talk that way, and your wife here in the house waiting for you. I have not seen her yet, but they tell me she is very beautiful.”