For the moment a flash of sudden anger came to the eyes of Joyce. ‘They are all mine!’ she cried. ‘It was to me she ought to have come. I am the one chiefly concerned!’ Then the flash quenched itself, and her look grew soft and wistful once more. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘if it was the Joyce you thought—if it was her you supposed—who was she? To tell me that, even if it should turn out all different, would do no harm.’
‘It would do no good either,’ he said: then turned round to her, and took her hand between his two large brown hands, which were trembling. ‘You are very like her,’ he said—‘so like her that I am forced to believe. She looked just as you are doing when I saw her last. Some relationship there must be—there must be!’ Here he dropped her hand again, as if he had not known that he held it. ‘There was wrong done to her—the Joyce I mean. She was made very unhappy; but no wrong was meant on—on my—on—on his part. Would you really like to hear the story? But it may turn out to be nothing—to have nothing to do with you.’
‘Oh, tell me; it will fill up the time; it will ease the suspense.’
‘That is what I feel,’ he said; ‘and you will keep the secret—that is, there is no secret; it is only what happened to—— what happened long, long ago—to—to one of my friends: you understand,’ he said tremulously, but with an effort to be very firm, looking at her, ‘to—one of my friends.’
Joyce made a sign of assent, too much absorbed in what she was about to hear to think what this warmth of asseveration meant. It was a relief to him to speak. It was like going over all the changes of the illness when a beloved sufferer lies between life and death.
‘They met,’ he said, ‘abroad, at a foreign station. She was very young. She was with people that were not kind to her. They married in a great hurry, without proper precautions, without thinking that anything could be wrong. They came home soon after for her health, and I—I had to—I—I don’t quite remember——’ his voice seemed to die away in his throat; then with another effort he recovered it and went on— ‘Her husband had to leave her and go back—to his duty: and then she heard from some wicked person—oh, some wicked person!—God forgive her, for I can’t—that it was not a true marriage. It was, it was! I protest to you no thought of harm—good Lord! nothing but love, honest love—and it was all right, all right, as it turned out.’
‘But she thought—she had been deceived!’ Joyce listened with her head drooping, keeping down the climbing sorrow in her throat, hardly able to find her voice.
‘She was always hasty,’ he said. ‘I am not the one to blame her—oh no, no—it was not wonderful, perhaps, that she should believe. And letters to India were not then as now—they took so long a time; and something happened to delay the answer. It was what you call nobody’s fault—only an accident—an accident that cost——’
‘You are very, very kind—oh, you are kind; you speak as if you had felt for her with all your heart—as if she had been your very own.’
He gave her a startled look, and made a momentary pause: then he proceeded, ‘That’s all,—all that anybody has known. She disappeared. His letter came back to him. He could not get home to search for her. It had to be trusted to others. After years, when I came back, I—I—but nothing could ever be found.’