“Yes, the more’s the pity—the more’s the pity!” she cried.
“That’s not what I should ever have expected from you. You are angry, Lily, and I confess there are things which I have done—in haste, or on the spur of the moment, or considering our joint interests perhaps more, my dear, than your feelings——”
“It would be well,” cried Lily with some of her old animation, “to decide which it was—a hasty impulse, as you say, on the spur of the moment, or our joint interests, which I deny for one! I never for a day was for any thing but honesty and openness, and no interest of mine was in it. But at least make up your mind. It was either in your haste or it was your calculation—it could not be both.”
“I did not think you would ever bring logic against me,” he said.
“Because I was an ignorant girl—and so I was, believing every thing you said, so many things that turned out one after another to be untrue: that you were to take me home at once as soon as the snow was over; that you were to get a house at Whit-Sunday, at Martinmas, and then at another Whit-Sunday, and then——” Lily had allowed herself to run on, having once begun to speak, as women are apt to do. She stopped herself now with an effort. “Of these things words can be said, but of what remains there are no words to speak. I will not try! I will not try! You have trampled on my heart and my soul and my life to your own end—my uncle’s money, my poor uncle that believed me, every word I said! And now I ask, what do you want more? Let me know it, and if I can, I will do it.”
“Do you know,” he cried, suddenly grasping her hand again with an almost fierce clutch, “that you can do nothing but what I permit? You are my wife, you have nothing, your uncle’s money or any other, but what I give you. You’re not your own to do what you like with yourself, as you seem to think, but mine to do what I like, and nothing else. If we’re to play at that, Lily, you must know that the strong hand is with me!”
“So it appears,” she said, with a fierce smile, looking at her fingers, crushed together, with the blood all pressed out of them, as he dropped her hand. His threat, his defiance, did not enter into her mind in all its force. Even in those days such a bondage of one reasonable creature to another was at first impossible to conceive. And Ronald was quick to change his tone. Of all things in the world the last he wanted was to enter into the enjoyment of Sir Robert’s fortune without his wife.
“Lily,” he said, “Heaven knows it is far from my wish to be tyrannical to you. There is no happiness for me in this world without you. If you can do without me, I cannot do without you. Am I saying I am without fault? No, no! I’ve done wrong, I’ve done many things wrong. But not beyond forgiveness, Lily—surely not that? What I did I thought was for the best. If I had thought you would not understand me, would not make allowance for me—but I believed you would trust me as I trusted you. Anyway, Lily, forgive me. We’re bound till death us part. Forgive me; a man can say no more than that.”
He was sincere enough at least now. And Lily’s heart was torn with that mingling of attraction and strong repulsion which is the worst of all such unnatural separations. She said at last: “I am going away to-morrow, Beenie and me. I had it settled before. You will not stop that. If you will give your help, I will be thankful. Nothing in this world, you or any other, can come between me and that! If it is a living bairn, or if it is a green grave——” Lily stopped, her voice choked, unable to say a word more.