“I thought you were married. I thought you were married to Florence Vyse.”
He almost laughed in the momentary relief.
“Thought I was married—and to Florence Vyse! Whoever told you so? and how could you have believed it? It must have been some absurd confusion of the news of her marriage, which is to take place shortly, true enough; but the bridegroom elect is Mr. Chepstow, not me. Oh, Marion, you didn’t really believe it?”
“Yes, I did,” she replied, still in the same dead tone. “I did believe it thoroughly, so thoroughly that it nearly killed me.”
“Ah, my darling!” he groaned, “then I am right. You have been very ill. I feared it. But now it is all right. Now, if indeed my whole life’s devotion can do so, I will make up to you for all the miserable past. Why, why did you doubt me, my love, my darling? You knew at least if I could not marry you, I should choose no other woman. But it is cruel to reproach you—cruel and useless, for it is all right now.”
And again he made as if he would draw her to his arms. But she put out her hands before her, as if in appeal.
“Stop!” she said; “stop, Ralph! You have not heard all yet. Remember it is a year since that letter was written. Truly it is useless to reproach me or anyone now, for—ah! how shall I tell him?—you have not heard all, Ralph! It is not all right, but fearfully, unchangeably wrong. Ralph, I am married!”
A sound as of a great, gasping sob of despair.
Then a voice she would not have known for him, said, “When?”
“Yesterday fortnight,” she replied, as if she were repeating a lesson learnt by rote; “yesterday fortnight. I was counting how long it was as I was sitting here before you came, and I remember I said to myself, ‘It was yesterday fortnight,’ otherwise I could not remember now. This is Thursday, and it was on a Wednesday. I am not Marion Vere now. His name is Baldwin—Geoffrey Baldwin—and he is my husband, and I promised to love him! Oh, God, forgive me! What is this thing that I have done? What is this awful punishment that has come upon me?”