“No,” said the unfortunate man, moving from one leg to the other in the extremity of his perplexity and distress. “No, you’re right, Evelyn, I didn’t. I suspected nothing. I was ashamed, bitterly ashamed of the whole affair. It was nothing but the suggestion of that little—I mean it was the madness of my disappointment at finding you not there. What I meant to say,” he added, taking a little courage, “was that perhaps if it had been anybody but you—”
“No,” she said. “No sophistry, James: whoever it had been, it would have been the same thing. You would have been ashamed to ask an honest woman any such question. You are not the kind of man to believe in any shameful thing. Most men believe in every shameful thing—that man, for instance, whom you thought I was going to consult.”
He hung his head a little under this taunt, but then he said in a certain self-justificatory tone, “You saw him after all.”
“I saw him,” she said, a slight flush for the first time rising on her face, “against my will. I was not aware he was there. I had heard from Rosamond that he was still abroad: not that I mean you to think,” she added at once, “that it would have made the least difference had I known he was there. I should have gone—to throw light upon this trouble—anywhere in the world—had the devil himself and not Edward Saumarez been there. I don’t know which is the worst,” she said impulsively. “I think the other one’s perhaps belied, but not he.”
Evelyn’s strong speech made her falter for a moment and be silent, which encouraged Rowland to say, putting out his hand again, “Devil he may be, but I’m cutting a poor enough figure. Do you think you will be able to forgive me, Evelyn? I will never do it again.”
The rueful humility of the tone restored Mrs. Rowland to herself. She laughed putting her hand in his. “Yes, do it again,” she said, “for there never was anything so delightful in the world as a man who follows his wife off to London, where she is perhaps going astray, and is ashamed to ask her what she is doing when he finds her there. You make me proud of my Othello: for he is quite a new one, better than Shakespeare’s. Oh, James! what a difference, what a difference! To think you should both be men of the same race, that hideous satyr, and you!”
To say that good James Rowland had any very clear idea what she was raving about would be untrue. He knew no resemblance he could possibly have to Othello, nor what Shakespeare had to do with it. Neither was he clear who was the hideous satyr. But he knew that this trust on Evelyn’s part was to his own credit and praise, and he was pleased, as the best of men may be.
“Well,” he said, recovering himself entirely, “we will consider that incident over, Evelyn, and me the most happy man in Scotland, be the other who he may. I owe Archie some amends for suspecting him, but you will allow—”
“I will allow nothing,” said Evelyn. “Had you treated him as you treat me, and been ashamed to suggest such a thing to your son as you own you were to your wife, we might all have been spared a great deal of pain. But now it’s all over, thank God, and you will know better another time.”
“Don’t fall upon me and slay me on another ground after you’ve forgiven me on your own,” he said. And then he grew suddenly grave and asked, “Did he give you any details—did he tell you why he did it, the unhappy boy?”