“I have a right to know what has brought you together,” she said, drawing a chair to the table, and suddenly seating herself between them. “I will go home when you are ready to come with me, Arthur. What is it? for, whatever it is, I have a right to know.”
Edgar came to her side and took her hand, which she gave to him almost reluctantly, averting her face.
“Clare,” he said, almost in a whisper, “this is the only moment for all these years that I could not be happy to see you. Go home, for God’s sake, as he says——”
“I will not,” said Clare. “Some new misfortune has occurred to bring you two together. Why should I go home, to be wretched, wondering what has happened? For my children’s sake, I will know what it is.”
Neither of them made her any answer. There were several papers lying on the table between them—one a bulky packet, directed in what Clare knew to be his solicitor’s handwriting, to Arthur Arden. Miss Lockwood had played Edgar false, and, even while she urged him on, had already placed her papers in the lawyer’s hands. Arden had thus known the full dangers of the exposure before him, when, with some vague hopes of a compromise, he had met Edgar, whom he insisted on considering Miss Lockwood’s emissary. He had been bidding high for silence, for concealment, and had been compelled to stomach Edgar’s indignant refusal, which for the moment he dared not resent, when Clare thus burst upon the scene. They were suddenly arrested by her appearance, stopped in mid-career.
“Is it any renewal of the past?—any new discovery? Edgar, you have found something out—you are, after all——”
He shook his head.
“Dear Clare, it is nothing about me. Let me come and see you after, and tell you about myself. This is business-mere business,” said Edgar, anxiously. “Nothing,” his voice faltered, “to interest you.”
“You tell lies badly,” she said; “and he says nothing. What does it mean? What are these papers?—always papers—more papers—everything that is cruel is in them. Must I look for myself?” she continued, her voice breaking, with an agitation which she could not explain. She laid her hand upon some which lay strewed open upon the table. She saw Edgar watch the clutch of her fingers with a shudder, and that her husband kept his eyes upon her with a strange, horrified watchfulness. He seemed paralyzed, unable to interfere till she had secured them, when he suddenly grasped her hand roughly, and cried, “Come, give them up; there is nothing there for you!”
Clare was not dutiful or submissive by nature. At the best of times such an order would have irritated rather than subdued her.