Speak! I put up my trembling hand as if to beat off her words. That unholy idea—yes, it did seem to me unholy in those first confused moments—was growing into a great monster of fear. Mrs. Penn looked as if she could not take in enough of the signs.
"What if her husband were Harry Chandos?"
With the strange noise surging in my ears—with my pulses standing cold and still, and then coursing on to fever heat,—with my temples beating to burning pain—no wonder I could not weigh my words.
"Oh, Mrs. Penn! Do not tell it me!"
"Think you that you need telling, Anne? I can add something more. Never will Harry Chandos love again in this world, you or any one else, as passionately as he once loved Ethel Wynne."
My senses were getting confused; as if I no longer understood things. She went on.
"Husband and wife live apart sometimes, although they may inhabit the same roof. She and Harry Chandos parted; it is years ago now; she used him very ill; and I don't suppose he has ever so much as touched her hand since, save in the very commonest courtesies of everyday life: and that only when he could not help himself. Passion has long been over between them; they are civil when they meet; nothing more. My poor child, you look ready to fall."
I did fall. But not until she left the room. I fell on the ground, and let my head lie there in my shock of misery. Much that had been obscure before seemed to shine out clearly now; things to which I had wanted a clue, appeared to be plain. I wished I could die, there as I lay, rather than have found him out in deceit so despicable.
CHAPTER XXV
NOTHING BUT MISERY.
The sun shone brightly into my room in the morning, but there would be no more day's sun for me. What a night I had passed! If you have ever been deceived in the manner I had, you will understand it; if not, all the writing in the world would fail to convey to you a tithe of the misery that was mine—and that would be mine for years to come. Her husband! whilst he pretended to love me!