"If she had never come between us, I do not think I should have been ill now."
"I cannot understand it," he repeated, a wailing sound in his emphasized words. "I have been foolish, thoughtless, wrong: though not to the extent you may possibly have imagined. But surely, taking it at its worst, that was not cause sufficient to bring you to death."
"Your love left me for another. It seemed to me--it seemed to me--more than I could bear."
Partly from the agitation the topic called up, partly that she was in hesitation how to frame her words, the pauses came. It was as if she would fain have said more.
"My love? oh no. It was but a passing--" the word at his tongue's end was "fancy," but he substituted another--"folly. Clara! do not give me more than my share of blame; that will be heavy enough, Heaven knows. The old man says that the violent cold you caught at Guild, was the primary cause of decay: surely that cannot be charged upon me."
She was silent a few moments--but, as he had said, there ought to be full confidence between them now--and she had been longing to tell him the whole unreserved truth; a longing that had grown into a sick yearning.
"I will tell you now how I caught that cold. Do you remember the night?"
"Not particularly." He was of a forgetful nature, and the events of the night had only been those of many another.
"Don't you remember it? When you were walking with--her--in the shrubbery in the raw twilight.--"
Mr. Lake slightly shook his head in the pause she made. Twilight shrubbery walks were lying in numbers on his conscience.