“In what did we do wrong, Clare?”
“In ever thinking of those—those papers. We should have burnt them, you and I together. What was it to anyone what happened between us? We were the sole Ardens of the family—the only ones to be consulted.”
“Clare! Clare! I am no Arden at all. Would you have had me live on a lie all my life, and build my own comfort upon some one else’s wrong?”
“You were always too high-flown, Edgar,” she said, with the practical quiet of old. “Why did you come to me whenever you heard that trouble was coming? Because you were my brother. Instinct proves it. If you are my brother, then it is you who should be master at Arden, and not—anyone else.”
“It is true I am your brother,” he said, sitting down by her, and looking tenderly into her colourless face.
“Then we were wrong, Edgar—we were wrong—I know we were wrong; and now we must suffer for it,” she said, with a low moan. “My boy will be like you, the heir, and yet not the heir; but for him I will do more than I did for you. I will not stop for lying. What is a lie? A lie does not break you off from your life.”
“Does it not? Clare, if you would think a moment——”
“Oh! I think!” she cried—“I think!—I do nothing but think! Come, now, we must not talk any more; it is time to go.”
They drove together in a street cab to an obscure street in the city, where there was a church which few people ever entered. I doubt if this choice was so wise as they thought, but the incumbent was old, the clerk old, and everything in their favour, so far as secrecy was concerned. Arthur Arden met them there, pale, but eager as any bridegroom could be. Clare had her veil—a heavy veil of black lace—over her face; the very pew-opener shuddered at such a dismal wedding, and naturally all the three officials, clergyman, clerk, and old woman, exerted all their aged faculties to penetrate the mystery. The bridal party went back very silently in another cab to Clare’s hotel, where Arthur Arden saw his children, seizing upon them with hungry love and caresses. He did not suspect, as Edgar did, that the play was not yet played out.
“You have never said that you forgive me, Clare,” he said, after, to his amazement, she had sent her boy and girl away.