"No? But you have been—you were while Sir Noel lived?"
"My husband was very good to me, Captain Everard. His death was the greatest misfortune that could have befallen me."
"But you are young, you are free, you are rich, you are beautiful. You may wear a coronet next time."
His face and glance were so darkly grave, that the covert sneer was almost hidden. But she felt it.
"I shall never marry again, Captain Everard."
"Never? You surprise me! Six years—nay, seven, a widow, and with innumerable attractions. Oh, you cannot mean it!"
She made a sudden, passionate gesture—looked at him, then away.
"It is useless—worse than useless, folly, madness, to lift the veil from the irrevocable past. But don't you think, don't you, Lady Thetford, that you might have been equally happy if you had married me?"
She made no reply. She stood gazing seaward, cold and still.
"I was madly, insanely, absurdly in love with pretty Ada Vandeleur in those days, and I think I would have made her a good husband; better, however—forgive me—than I ever made my poor dead wife. But you were wise and ambitious, my pretty Ada, and bartered your black eyes and raven ringlets to a higher bidder. You jilted me in cold blood, poor love-sick devil that I was, and reigned resplendent as my Lady Thetford. Ah! you knew how to choose the better part, my pretty Ada!"