She lay still as a tiger that is going to spring. He fell on his knees beside her, weeping, storming in his passion. Good Lord! was it my doing? was I responsible? White gave me a furious look, and rushed out of the room. The husband and wife were reconciled.
CHAPTER X
This is about the end of the story so far as I am concerned. He spent the night there by her sofa, kissing her dress and her hands, and watching her in a transport of passion and perhaps delight. For the last I would not answer. It must have been at best a troubled joy; and a man’s infatuation for a beautiful face is not what I call love, though it is often a very tragic and terrible passion. He took her away in the morning, but not to his own house. They went straight from mine to London, that great receptacle of everybody’s misery and happiness. I saw them both before they left, though only for a moment. She was still lying on the sofa as when I left her, and the half disorder of her hair, the exhaustion in her face, seemed rather to enhance her beauty. Any one else would have looked jaded and worn out, but a faint flush of triumph and satisfaction had stolen over her (partly perhaps produced by her weakness) and woke the marble into life. She stretched out her hand to me carelessly as I went in. She said with a smile, ‘You see my feeling was right. I always trust my feelings. I knew you were the person to do it, and you have done it. I felt it whenever I saw your face.’
‘I hope it will be lasting, and that you may be happy,’ I said, faltering, not knowing what tone to take.
‘Oh, yes, it is to be hoped so. He is going to take me to London,’ she answered carelessly. ‘I am quite sorry to leave your nice house, everything has been so comfortable. It is small and it is plain, but you know how to make yourself comfortable. I suppose when one has lived so long one naturally does.’
This was all her thanks to me. The husband took the matter in a different way. They had a fire lighted and coffee taken to them in the drawing-room (which was left in the saddest confusion after all the disturbance of the night); and it was when the carriage he had ordered was at the door, and she had gone to make herself ready, that he came to me. I was in the dining-room with my breakfast on the table, which I was too much worn out to take. His face was very strange; it was full of suppressed excitement, with a wild, strained look about the eyes, and a certain air of heat and haste, though his colour was like ivory as usual. ‘I have to thank you,’ he said to me, very stiffly, ‘and if I said anything amiss in my surprise last night, I hope you will forgive it. I can only thank you now; nothing else is possible. But I must add, I hope we shall never meet again.’
‘I assure you, if we do, it shall not be with my will,’ said I, feeling very angry as I think I had a right to be.
He bowed, but made no reply; not because words failed him. I felt that he would have liked nothing better than to have fallen upon me and metaphorically torn me to pieces. He had been overcome by his own heart or passions, and had taken her back, but he hated me for having drawn him to do so. He saw the tragic folly of the step he was taking. There was a gloom in his excitement such as I cannot describe. He had no strength to resist her, but she was hateful to him even while he adored her. And doubly hateful, without any counter-balancing attraction, was I, who had as it were betrayed him to his fate.
‘I trust your wife and you will be happy—now,’ I said, trying to speak firmly. He interrupted me with a hoarse laugh.
‘My wife!’