“But you must, dear,” Bessie declared; “you are thinking even now about me. What is the conclusion at which you have arrived?”
“I was only marvelling!” Mrs. Dudley answered. “If you are married, where is your husband—why are you here? if you are not married—oh! Bessie, sweet, forgive me!”
“Forgive you, Heather!” Bessie answered, “forgive you! If you think even the implication of such a misfortune so hurtful to me, what will the reality prove to you, Heather? I am not a married woman, spite of this—and this”—she pointed to ring and infant—“I am no more married in the eye of the law, than I was when I left Berrie Down!”
“God help you!” Heather murmured, softly.
“Ay, God help me, indeed!” Bessie repeated. “Sometimes, sitting here alone, I think He has dealt with me very hardly; but, then, I look at my child and grow patient. I want to tell you my story, if it will not weary you.”
“Weary me!” Heather exclaimed.
“You do not draw away from me—you do not regard me as a pariah,” Bessie continued. “If I were to go to my mother now, and tell her what I am about to tell you, she would order me out of the house, and address me for ever after with the doorchain up. Do you understand me clearly, Heather Dudley?” she said, almost impatiently. “I am not a married woman, and yet I am a mother! Shall I fetch your shawl and bonnet, and send for a cab, and bid you farewell for ever? Don’t you hate to touch me? Is the room not oppressive in which I breathe the same air with you?” and, as she spoke, Bessie rose excitedly, and would have moved farther away but that Heather caught and chid her for her want of faith.
“I am your friend, love,” she said in the low tone which had such a virtue of healing and leisure in it—“not your judge. We are woman to woman now, Bessie, tell me what you will.”
Then Bessie, flinging herself on her knees, buried her face in the folds of Heather’s dress, and sobbed aloud. “I have sinned,” she said, “I have sinned, but not willingly; my greatest guilt was my deceitfulness, my sly ingratitude.”
“You were deceitful,” Heather answered. “Oh! Bessie, how could you, how was it possible for you, to engage yourself to Gilbert Harcourt, caring, as you must have done——”