What good had her coming wrought, then? Had it done any one of the things Georgina had prayed of her to effect? They would speak indeed, but there would be a quarrel—possibly a separation, for that was evidently the result Basil desired to bring about.
Never before, never had Phemie felt herself so powerless as with this man, who once professed to love her; and it was for him—oh! Heaven, it was for one like this—she had broken her husband’s heart, and nearly brought dishonour on an honest man.
“How I loved him—God of mercy, how I loved him,” she murmured to herself, while her companion still kept rhyming out his complaints, and then, thinking of all the misery of the past—of the terrible trial in store for him—of the fearful contrast between his thoughts and hers, her self-command gave way, and covering her face with her hands, sobbed like a child.
In an instant Basil ceased his lamentations; the very tone of his voice changed as he asked her what was the matter—what he had said to vex her—why she was weeping. He drew her hands from before her eyes with a gentle force, and prayed her to stop crying, or, at all events, to tell him what she was crying for.
“I was thinking about the years gone by,” she answered.
“Those happy years,” he said, and the voice was tender as the voice she remembered so well.
“Were they happy to you?” she returned. “They were not so to me. Can you bear to look back upon them?—I cannot,” and then, urged by necessity, Phemie made a speech which brought the colour to her cheeks and dried the tears in her eyes. “You said you loved me in those days, Basil—was it true?”
“True as sorrow,” he answered; but he felt there was something behind her question, and he kept his hand on her arm, and prevented her turning completely away from him, while she proceeded—
“I do not want to go back and tell of all the misery you caused me then, but I do want you to promise me something now, for the sake of that old dead love of the long ago.”
“Not dead, Phemie!—not dead!” he replied.