“Are you going to open your lips again to-day?” persisted Mrs. Basil Stondon; and at last Phemie answered, while she rose and laid her hand gently on Georgina:—
“Yes. I am going to ask you, why you will persist in regarding me as your enemy? When I followed Basil into Yorkshire—when I brought him home with me—when I broke the bad news to him in such a way that he never had an angry feeling towards you in consequence, was I your enemy? Was I not, at all events, only doing your bidding—only trying to accomplish what you wanted, to the best of my ability?”
“Yes; but it seemed so hard for such interference to be necessary,” said Georgina, softening a little.
“Was that my fault? He married you; why he married you is quite beside the question; he did marry you, and for years you had him all to yourself. I should not care if a man had loved fifty women before he made me his wife. If I could not turn them all out, and keep the citadel against them, I should say I did not deserve to have it.”
“And does the same rule hold good with regard to husbands, Mrs. Stondon?” asked the other, maliciously.
“We were talking of wives, not of husbands,” answered Phemie; and continued: “Feeling as you did towards me, why did you ever ask me to Marshlands?—why did you press me to stay there?”
“Because I was weary of my life—because you were better than nobody—because it looked well—because it tormented Basil—stop; let me go back to the beginning, where you interrupted my story. I do not mind showing you my hand, now the game is over. We were married, as I told you; the mutiny broke out, and we were bound still closer by the feeling of a common danger; besides, he was grateful to me. Oh! yes, he was grateful, for he set great store by his life, and I had saved it! My father was killed, as you heard, and Basil was sorry for my loss. Altogether, though I knew he did not love me even then, still we got on very well for a time, and the only quarrel we had originated in his obstinate refusal to write to Captain Stondon and tell him of his marriage.”
“‘You are afraid of him letting her know, I suppose,’ I was provoked at last into saying. That was my first downrightly bad move, and you were the occasion of it.
“‘It was your doing, then, that I had to leave Marshlands,’ he answered on the instant, almost indeed before I had time to wish my own words unspoken, ‘how did you manage it?’
“I told him all—I did really—all that you have assured me came to your knowledge after you were left a widow. I could not help writing that note. I would have done anything to part you—anything to get him out to India with us—I was so fond of him; but he put it all down to love of Marshlands; and so, when at last news came to us of your husband’s death, he turned to me and said, ‘You have got that which you schemed for so well and so long; I wish you joy of it.’