“Yes, except my maid, Rachel Brand; you remember her?—I am quite alone.”
“And how—how is it so?” he was going to ask, but stopped. “No,” he went on, “I will not presume on our old friendship to ask questions you may not care to answer; only tell me, Eugenia, can I be of any service to you?”
“None, thank you,” she answered sadly. “No one can help me. Even Sydney no longer feels with me—that is why I am here alone.”
“Your doubting Sydney makes me doubt if things are so bad as they seem to you,” he said, with a little smile.
“Don’t doubt it,” she said quickly. “They could not be worse, Gerald,” she added, after a little pause. “You have known a good deal about me—more perhaps almost than any one else. I will tell you the worst sting of my misery—I have come to know that my husband does not care for me—that he never has done so—that never a woman made a more fatal mistake than I when I married.”
Mr Thurston started violently; a sort of spasm of pain contracted his forehead—pain of the past, not of the present, so far as he himself was concerned.
“Eugenia,” he said, gravely, “from you, these are terrible words.”
“I know they are,” she said bitterly, “but I believe they are true. I married under a double delusion. But I believe I could have endured the one great disappointment of finding how I had overestimated my—my—never mind. I say, I think I could have learnt to bear my many disappointments, and make the best of my materials, had my other belief, my sheet anchor, not failed me as it has done. By the light of what I now know, I can see that for some time its hold has been growing feeble and uncertain on me, and in consequence my strength has decreased, my good resolutions have faded, till now I have nothing to hold to. I hardly care where I drift—what does it matter?”
“What does it matter?” broke out Gerald, indignantly. “Eugenia, do you know what you are saying? Oh, you foolish, presumptuous child! Does duty depend on inclination, do obligations cease to bind us when they become difficult or painful? Allowing that you have been deceived, allowing that you have found your life essentially other than you expected, does that set you free from responsibility? The world is bad enough already, but what it would be if we all regulated our conduct by your principles, I should shudder to think. And the cowardliness of it too! Eugenia, I thought you a woman incapable of thus deserting your post!”
The colour had mounted to Eugenia’s pale face, but the tears had ceased to flow. “You are very hard, Gerald,” she said at last. “You cannot possibly estimate my position correctly. I left my husband because I felt I should grow worse if I stayed, grow worse myself, and make him grow so too. For my belief in him once shattered, no link remained between us, no common ground on which we could meet. What could be the end of such a life?”