"Thank you" she answered gently "and no, please—don't ask for a lamp. Such a wretch as I am naturally prefers the dark. Mr. Liston," with strange, swift abruptness, "I have lain in there, and within the last few hours I have been able to think. I believe all that you have told me. I know what I am—as utterly lost and forlorn a sinner as the wide earth holds. I know what he is—a greater villain than if, on the night I saw him first, he had stabbed me to the heart. All this I know. Mr. Liston, will you tell me something more. Are you Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy?"
In the course of his forty years of life, Mr. Liston had come across a good many incomprehensible women, but perhaps, he had never been quite so completely taken aback before. She spoke the name of her betrayer, of the man she had loved so passionately, and in one moment had lost for ever, without one tremor or falter. The sombre eyes were looking at him full. He drew nearer to her—a great exultation in his soul. This girl was made of sterner stuff than Lucy West. Laurence Thorndyke's hour had come.
"Am I Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy? His enemy, Miss Bourdon—his bitterest enemy on earth for the last five years."
"I thought so. I don't know why, but I thought so. Mr. Liston, what has he done to you?"
"Blighted and darkened my life, as he has blighted and darkened yours. He was hardly one-and-twenty then, but the devil was uppermost in him from his cradle. Her name was Lucy West, I had known her from babyhood, was almost double her age, but when I asked her to marry me she consented. I loved her well, she knew that I could take her to the city to live, that was the desire of her heart. I know now she never cared for me, but they were poor and pinched at home, and she was vain of her rose-and-milk skin, of her bright eyes and sparkling teeth.
"I was old, and small, and plain, but I could give her silk dresses and a house in town, a servant to wait upon her, and she was ready to marry me. I was then what I am now, Mr. Darcy's land steward, agent, confidential valet, all in one. Young Mr. Laurence came home from Harvard for his vacation; and full of admiration for this bright young beauty, proud and fond beyond all telling of her, I took him down with me to show him the charming little wife I was going to marry. No thought of distrusting either ever entered my mind, in my way I loved and admired both, with my whole heart. Miss Bourdon, you know this story before I tell it, one of the oldest stories the world has to tell.
"We remained a fortnight. Then I had to go back to New York. It was August, and we were to be married in October. He returned with me, stayed a week with his adopted uncle, then returned to Boston, so he said. One week later, while I was busily furnishing the pretty house I had hired for my little Lucy, came a letter from Lucy's mother. I see at this moment, Mrs. Laurence, the sunny, busy street at which I sat stupidly staring, for hours after I read that letter. I hear the shouts of the children at play, the hot, white quiver of the blazing August noon-day.
"Lucy had gone, run away from home with a young man, nobody knew who for certain, but everybody thought with the young gentleman I had brought there, Mr. Thorndyke. I had trusted her, Mrs. Laurence, as I tell you I had loved and trusted them both entirely. I sat there stupefied, I need not tell you what I suffered. Next day I went down to the village. Her mother was nearly crazed, the whole village was gossiping the shameful story. He—or some one like him, had been seen haunting the outskirts of the village, she had stolen, evening after evening, to some secret tryst.
"She had left a note—'she couldn't marry old Liston,' she said; 'she had gone away with somebody she liked ten thousand times better. They needn't look for her. If he made her a lady she would come back of herself, if not—but it was no use their looking for her. Tell Mr. Liston she was sorry, and she hoped mother wouldn't make a fuss, and she was her affectionate daughter, Lucy.'
"I sat and read the curiously heartless words, and I knew just as well as if she had said so, that it was with young Laurence she had gone. I knew, too, for the first time, how altogether heartless, base, and worthless was this girl. But there was nothing to be said or done. I went back to New York, to my old life, in a stupid, plodding sort of way. I said nothing to Mr. Darcy. I sold off the pretty furniture. I waited for young Mr. Laurence to return; he did return at Christmas—handsome, high-spirited, and dashing as ever. But he rather shrank from me, and I saw it. I went up to him on the night of his arrival, and calmly asked him the question: