‘I should have found some other way to get out of it. There was never a difficulty yet but I found a way of getting out of it. I should have done so then, had you not come forward to say it was Emily—Emily, a child, a nobody—whom he loved, and that I was his confidante. I can see it all now. He had no escape. Artémise, I have loved you better than any woman all your life, and you repaid me by taking away from me—handing over to that girl——’
Her eyes were ablaze in her flushed yet withered face. Her whole frame was trembling with angry emotion. Mrs. Brown rose quickly and went to her, taking her hands, holding her fast. ‘It is twenty years ago,’ she said, ‘and it was to save your honour, your position, everything, Cecile—your child, your wealth, everything you had in the world.’
‘I can see the scene now as if it was yesterday—my husband there, blazing like white light. He never looked like that in his life but once. And he—confused, afraid—on the other side of me, trembling for me.’
‘And a little for himself, Cecile.’
‘Silence! If you say so, I will strike you. And you, with your smooth tongue—always with your smooth tongue. How many lies it must have told first to be capable of that!’
‘For your sake; you know it was for your sake. If you remember all that, remember, too, how the storm died down in a moment, and all was well.’
‘Well!’ said the other. She leant back her head upon the breast of the woman whom she was accusing. ‘If it had raged itself out, and done its worst, would not that have been better than all that has followed—the bitterness and the hate, and the horror, and that girl living at my very door, to make me mad?’
‘Why did you see her, Cecile? You might have ignored her altogether, forgotten her existence.’
‘You forget,’ cried Mrs. Swinford. ‘She is the great lady of the village—takes precedence’—she laughed out with a hysterical violence which shook her from head to foot—‘precedence of me, if we were in the world together! Don’t you know that? But it will soon come to an end,’ she added, laughing again with that electric tinkle which wore out the nerves of all who heard her. ‘What a good thing they are so sordid a family, those Pakenhams, loving money as other people love their children, whatever is dearest to them! She will be called on to prove every step, and she will not be able to prove one. And then!—we shall see what the village will think of her title and her precedence then.’
‘You have been agitating yourself in the most imprudent, in the most foolish way. Where are your drops? Her precedence, poor thing, will not hurt you, but a long faint will hurt you. Cecile, must I call your maid to see you in this state, or will you be quiet and listen to me?’