He had been affecting to speak lightly, jokingly, toying at the same time with some trifle on the mantel-piece. But as he turned his eyes on Lucy at the conclusion of his sentence, he saw that the tears were falling on her cheeks. The words, the ideas they conjured up, had jarred painfully on every fibre of her heart. Lionel's light mood was gone.
"Lucy," he whispered, bending to her, his tone changing to one of passionate earnestness, "I dare not stay here longer. There are moments when I am tempted to forget my position, to forget honour, and speak words that—that—I ought not to speak. Even now, as I look down upon you, my heart is throbbing, my veins are tingling; but I must not touch you with my finger, or tell you of my impassioned love. All I can do is to carry it away with me, and battle with it alone."
Her face had grown white with emotion. She raised her wet eyes yearningly to his; but she still spoke the simple truth, unvarnished, the great agony that was lying at her heart.
"How shall I live on, with you away? It will be more lonely than I can bear."
"Don't, child!" he said in a wailing tone of entreaty. "The temptation from my own heart is all too present to me. Don't you tempt me. Strong man though I am, there are things that I cannot bear."
He leaned on the mantel-piece, shading his face with his hand. Lucy stood in silence, striving to suppress her emotion from breaking forth.
"In the old days—very long ago, they seem now, to look back upon—I had the opportunity of assuring my life's happiness," he continued in a low, steady tone. "I did not do it; I let it slip from me, foolishly, wilfully; of my now free act. But, Lucy—believe me or not as you like—I loved the one I rejected, more than the one I took. Before the sound of my marriage bells had yet rung out on my ears, the terrible conviction was within me that I loved that other better than all created things. You may judge, then, what my punishment has been."
She raised her eyes to his face, but he did not see them, did not look at her. He continued—
"It was the one great mistake of my life; made by myself alone. I cannot plead the excuse which so many are able to plead for life's mistakes—that I was drawn into it. I made it deliberately, as may be said; of my own will. It is but just, therefore, that I should expiate it. How I have suffered in the expiation, Heaven alone knows. It is true that I bound myself in a moment of delirium, of passion; giving myself no time for thought. But I have never looked upon that fact as an excuse; for a man who has come to the years I had should hold his feelings under his own control. Yes; I missed that opportunity, and the chance went by for life."
"For life?" repeated Lucy, with streaming eyes. It was too terribly real a moment for any attempt at concealment. A little reticence, in her maiden modesty; but of concealment, none.