“Shall I? it does not hurt them.”
“It is all very well to say that now; but wait till you are older. Mother used to say there was nothing so bad. Ah, Nancy, you have taken things into your own hands—dear old mother’s rules don’t count for much now.”
“Indeed they do,” cried Nancy, with sudden tears; “indeed they do, and will whatever happens! I am not unfaithful. Those that I love, if I love them once, I love them for ever—dead or alive.”
“Ah!” said Matilda, with a tone of interrogation in her voice. It was not clear what she was thinking of; but Nancy’s quick temper and restless spirit divined at once.
“You mean Arthur? Well then, and I mean it too. All the same I do. I mayn’t have just shown it—always: but I do mean it—and will, if I should live a hundred years.”
“I wonder at you, Nancy! Why don’t you write then and tell him? I never knew whether you did or didn’t till this moment—and it looked a great deal more like didn’t. He thought so, I’m sure.”
“Could I give you the sense to see, either to him or you?” cried Nancy, with quick scorn. She did not know that Dr. Johnson had declared it impossible to furnish understanding. And then she threw up her arms with a sudden fine gesture, tossing down the red brown winterly leaves, and shaking the tea-table with its load. “Oh, what am I to do?” she cried, “what am I to do? I am going to the Hall on Saturday; they want me to go, they have all asked me to go; and Lady Curtis called me, my dear. But she didn’t know who I was. And I am deceiving them, Matty. It is the same as telling a lie. I have done a great many wicked things,” said Nancy, “but I never told a lie. How am I to go and sit at their table, and look in their faces, and all the time it will be a lie?”
“What will be a lie?” said sober-minded Matilda. “You don’t need to say anything that isn’t true. It is not as if you had changed your name. You are Mrs. Arthur, and you would be Mrs. Arthur whatever happened. I do believe Miss Lucy suspects something; she has a way of taking things so quietly as if nothing was new to her. And anyhow, if the very worst should come to the worst, why, you’re not compelled to go.”
“But I will go,” said Nancy, with flashing eyes. “Oh, just to be there, to see it all, to know just where he would have taken me, where I might have lived if I hadn’t been a——. I will go! I have made up my mind to that. She called me, my dear—did I tell you she called me my dear? and said old Sir John had raved about me; and begged me to go.” The vivid blush of pleasure came back to Nancy’s face as she spoke, and her eyes again blazed, opposite the lamp, like rival yet reflecting lights. A vague smile came upon her face; there was a little vanity in it, pleased satisfaction with the conquests she had made. Then a cloud came suddenly over it. “But all the same it will be cheating, oh, it will be cheating, Matty! I won’t give it up; but you may begin to pack the boxes,” said Nancy, suddenly. “After I have been there, I shall have to tell them everything, and we must go away.”
“Go away! I think you are out of your senses, Nancy. We have just paid the second month in advance, and they will never give it back; and consider how expensive it is travelling with so much luggage—everything we have in the world. I thought,” said Matilda, aggrieved, “that we should at least have stayed here, now that we are here, till something was settled, till you had made up your mind one way or other.”