"I could have sworn to the man, too, I think."
"You were abroad, and so I did not press the matter, and in time the affair blew over altogether."
The conversation ended, and was perhaps forgotten by all save Robert Vavasour, and he could not forget it, but snatched his hat and strolled out hastily into the Park. What had made his wife's face flush so deeply? Had it anything to do with Charles, whom Frances was so constantly throwing at his teeth? He began to hate the very name, and was daily growing more madly suspicious of his wife, and yet had his thoughts framed themselves into words he would have shrunk from the bare idea of suspecting his idol. That she had not loved him with all her heart when he married her he knew: she had told him so; and how easy he had thought the task of winning the heart she had assured him none other had ever asked to have an interest in; but then had she loved none other? perhaps this very man of whom for one half hour he remembered being jealous long ago. When she told him the first, why if it was so, had she not told him the second? Why give him only half her confidence? Perhaps she loved him still? Perhaps the remembrance of him had called the guilty blush to her cheek? "Ah! if it is so!" he cried with angry vehemence, "he shall die. I will be revenged!"
"Vengeance! who talks of vengeance?" said a voice near, and, looking up, he saw Goody Grey leaning on her staff. Involuntarily he tendered her some halfpence.
"I want them not," she said. "It does not do for the blind to lead the blind."
"What mean you, woman? I am in no mood to be trifled with."
"Don't I know that?" she replied; "don't I know the bitterness of the heart? Do you think I have lived all these years and don't know where misery lies?"
"Where does it lie?" he asked.
"In your heart. Where it wouldn't have been if you hadn't been there;" and she pointed in the direction of the Hall. "'Tis a gay meeting, and may be as sad a parting."
"Why so?" asked he again.