“Yes?” Florence said, listening almost against her will.
“And I was young and inexperienced. How could I know the danger in so many things that amused me? At last I fell in love; I had been so lonely, I was so tired, and I had never cared for any one in my whole life before.”
“But you knew that it was wrong. You were married.”
“Oh yes, but the paths of virtue had been deadly dull, and trodden with a man I did not love and whom I had been made to marry. The man I did love was young and handsome,—he is a soldier. The rest of the story was natural, even if it was wicked.”
“And then?” asked Florence, wonderingly.
“Then my husband came back, and there were the usual details. He heard something that sent him flying home to look after his honour. He had forgotten to look after mine—or my happiness.”
“And the man?”
“He had gone to India with his regiment. He telegraphed over, ‘No defence,’ and that was the end of it.”
“I hope he will come back and make you reparation.”
“He has not written me a line,” Mrs. North said, and the tears came into her eyes for a moment—“not a word, not a sign. Perhaps he is dead—India is a country that swallows up many histories; or, perhaps,” she added desperately, “he, too, despises me now. People flee from me as if I had the plague,” she added, with the bitter laugh again. “Oh, there are no people in the world who encourage wickedness as do the strictly virtuous.”