"I hid my bruised feelings, and rode the high horse of mocking indifference; letting none suppose false Ethel had left a wound. The wound was there, and a pretty sharp one; five fathom deep, though I strove to bury it." He paused an instant, and then went on. "In six months' time she and George were tired of each other—if appearances might be trusted—and he spent a great deal of his time abroad. Ethel resented it: she said he had no right to go out taking pleasure without her: but George laughed off the complaints in his light way. They made their home at Heneage Grange, and had been married nearly a year when George went on that fatal visit to Mr. Edwin Barley's."
"Then—when that calamity took place he had a wife!" I exclaimed in surprise: I suppose because I had never heard it at the time.
"Certainly. The shock to Ethel was dreadful. She believed him guilty. Brain fever attacked her, and she has never been quite bright in intellect since, but is worse at times than others. Hers is a disappointed life. She had married George in the supposition that he was heir to the baronetcy; she found herself the wife of an exiled man, an accused murderer."
"Has she been aware of the secret visits of her husband?"
"They could not be kept entirely from her. Since the calamity, she has never been cordial with him: acquaintances they have been, but no more: it almost seems as though Ethel had forgotten that other ties once existed between them. She is most anxious to guard his secret; our only fear has been that she might inadvertently betray it. For this we would have concealed from her his presence here as long as might be, but she has always found it out and resented it loudly, reproaching me and my mother with having no confidence in her. You must remember the scene in the corridor when I locked the door of your room; Ethel had just burst into the west wing with reproaches, and they, George and my mother, were bringing her back to her own apartments. She goes there daily now, and reads the Bible to him."
How the things came out—one after the other!
"And now, Anne, I think you know all; and will understand how, with this terrible sword—George's apprehension—ever unsheathed, I could not tell you of my love."
And what if it did? Strike or not strike, it would be all the same to my simple heart, beating now with its weight of happiness. I believe Mr. Chandos could read this in my downcast face, for a smile was parting his lips.
"Is it to be yes in any case, Anne?"
"I—— Perhaps," I stammered. "And then you will tell me the truth about yourself. What is it that is really the matter with you?" I took courage to ask, speaking at length of the fear that always lay upon me so heavily, and which I had been forbidden to speak about.