“Rosalind, are you mad? Don’t you see what hangs upon it? Reginald’s position—everything, perhaps. I must understand what she means. I must understand what that means.” John Trevanion’s face was utterly without color; he could not stand still—he was like a man on the rack. “I must know everything, and instantly; for how can she stay here, unless— She must not stay.”
This discussion, and his sharp, unhappy tone seemed to call Madam to herself.
“I did not faint,” she said, softly. “It is a mistake to call them faints. I never was unconscious; and surely, Rosalind, he has a right to know. I have come to explain everything.”
Roland Hamerton had been standing behind. He came close to Rosalind’s side. “Madam,” he said, “if you are not to stay here, wherever I have a house, wherever I can give you a shelter, it is yours; whatever I can do for you, from the bottom of my heart!”
Mrs. Trevanion opened her eyes, which had been closed. She shook her head very softly; and then she said almost in a whisper, “Rosalind, he is very good and honest and true. I should be glad if— And Amy, my darling! you must go and get dressed. You will catch cold. Go, my love, and then come back to me. I am ready, John. I want to make everything clear.”
Rosalind held her hand fast. She stood like a sentinel facing them all, her left hand clasping Mrs. Trevanion’s, the other free, as if in defence of her. And Roland stood close behind, ready to answer any call. He was of Madam’s faction against all the world, the crowd (as it seemed to these young people), before whom she was about to make her defence. These two wanted no defence; neither did Mrs. Lennox, standing in front, wringing her hands, with her honest face full of trouble, following everything that each person said. “She is more fit to be in her bed than anywhere else,” Mrs. Lennox was saying; “she is as white—as white as my handkerchief. Oh, John, you that are so reasonable, and that always was a friend to her—how can you be so cruel to her? She shall stay,” cried Aunt Sophy, with a sudden outburst, “in my house— I suppose it is my house—as long as she will consent to stay.”
Notwithstanding this, of all the people present, there was no one who in his heart had stood by her so closely as John Trevanion. But circumstances had so determined it that he must be her judge now. He made a pause, and then pointed to the doorway in which the two young men stood with a mutual scowl at each other. “Explain that,” he said, in sharp, staccato tones, “first of all.”
“Yes, John, I will explain,” Mrs, Trevanion said, with humility. “When I met my husband first—” She paused as if to take breath—“I was married, and I had a child. I feel no shame now,” she went on, yet with a faint color rising over her paleness. “Shame is over for me; I must tell my story without evasion, as you say. It is this, John. I thought I was a deserted wife, and my boy had a right to his name. The same ship that brought Reginald Trevanion brought the news that I was deceived. I was left in a strange country without a friend—a woman who was no wife, with a child who had no father. I thought I was the most miserable of women; but now I know better. I know now—”
John’s countenance changed at once. What he had feared or suspected was never known to any of them; but his aspect changed; he tried to interrupt her, and, coming back to her side, took her other hand. “Grace,” he cried, “Grace! it is enough. I was a brute to think— Grace, my poor sister—”
“Thank you, John; but I have not done. Your father,” she went on, unconsciously changing, addressing another audience, “saw me, and heard my story. And he was sorry for me—oh, he was more than sorry. He was young and so was I. He proposed to me after a while that if I would give up my boy—and we had no living, nothing to keep us from starvation—and marry him, he would take care of the child; it should want for nothing, but that I must never see it more. For a long time I could not make up my mind. But poverty is very sharp; and how to get bread I knew not. The child was pining, and so was I. And I was young. I suppose,” she said in a low voice, drooping her head, “I still wished, still needed to be happy. That seems so natural when one is young. And your father loved me; and I him—and I him!”