“For pity’s sake,” entreated Phemie, “forget that he ever was fond of me; let the dead past lie: it was never so fair or pleasant that you need be continually taking off the coffin-lid to look at it.”
“Don’t talk to me about coffins,” exclaimed Georgina, with a shudder, “and he so ill; and as for your request, I would let the past lie if I could. I would bury it half a mile deep, and never desire to hear of it again, if you and he would only let me; but is it in a woman’s nature—cold as you are, I put it to you, would it be even in yours—to see a stranger preferred before you—to feel that she is seated in the innermost chamber while you are shivering outside on the doorstep?”
“It would not,” Phemie answered; “but then I am not in the innermost chamber, so there is no use in making yourself miserable about the matter.”
“If you are not, who is?” demanded Mrs. Basil Stondon; and Phemie remained silent for very want of the ability to answer the question. “If you had not been, would he have come to you with that letter?—would he have rushed straight as he did from me to you? Go back over your own life. When Captain Stondon found out that you and Basil were so fond of one another, what did he do? Did he fly from you as he might from a pestilence? Did he publish the story to Miss Derno, or any other miss or madam in the kingdom? Did he?”
“No,” replied Phemie; “but then my husband was a very different man to yours.”
“True,” said Mrs. Basil Stondon, “he was a very different man, and a very much better. You had a good husband, if you had only known how to value him; but still, good or not, different or not different, had Basil loved me he never would have come to you. It was my last attempt; now I throw up the cards.”
And when Georgina concluded, she made a movement as of flinging something from her, and turned sullenly aside.
Finding, however, that Phemie did not speak, she faced round again and asked,—
“Have you got nothing to remark on all that? When Basil gave you his version you were surely not so dumb?” But still Phemie made no reply.
She was wondering whether she should ever be able to reconcile this pair—whether any interference of hers might produce some good result—whether, if he lived, she could bring about some better understanding—whether, if he died, he would first recover sufficiently to speak kindly to his wife ere he departed.