"What were you?" Mrs. Vincent asked, the light beginning to dawn upon her.
"He didn't tell you?" Mrs. Lakeman said, in a low voice. "Perhaps he couldn't bear to speak of it; but he and I were all the world to each other till his opinions separated us. My father was Dr. Ashwell, Bishop of Barford—of course you have heard of him?" Her tone implied that even in these parts her father could not have been unknown. "He and my mother, Lady Mary—she was Lady Mary Torbey before she married"—the vulgarity of Mrs. Lakeman's soul was quite remarkable—"were devoted to Gerald; we all were, in fact, and he was devoted to us. But of course it was impossible," and she shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose you thought it would have done you harm to marry him, when he didn't pretend to believe what he didn't feel to be true?" Mrs. Vincent said, in her calm, direct manner.
"Well, you see—it couldn't be." The woman was horribly phlegmatic, Mrs. Lakeman thought. She was neither impressed nor jealous; her attitude, if anything, was mildly critical. "Of course, I wasn't free to do as I liked, as you were. Poor, dear Gerald! I know he suffered horribly. That's the curse of a position like ours. One has to accept its obligations," she added, loftily.
"I didn't know that anything need make one unfaithful to the man who loved one, and to whom one was bound by promises."
"I thought so, too; but I couldn't break my father's heart. I have never forgiven myself"—she tried hard to put tears into her eyes, but they would not come—"for I know what he suffered. He was a wanderer for years," she went on, "and never able to settle down in London again. I suppose that was how he found his way here. Tell me about your marriage." She gave a little gasp, as if she had screwed up courage to listen to details that would still be harrowing to her; but a gleam of amusement looked out of her blue eyes. Mrs. Vincent saw it, and, little as Mrs. Lakeman would have imagined her to be capable of it, she understood its meaning.
"I shouldn't care to talk about it to a stranger," she answered. "There are things that are sacred outside the Bible as well as written in it."
"I am not a stranger. I can't be a stranger to Gerald Vincent's wife." Mrs. Lakeman tried to be passionate, but it didn't come off very well. "I wouldn't say it to any one else in the world, but I've never ceased to care for him, and I don't believe—I don't believe," she repeated, in a low tone, "that he has ever quite forgotten me."
"I don't suppose he has forgotten you," Mrs. Vincent answered, calmly; "but I am certain that he has been faithful to his wife and child here."