'You here?'
'I may return the compliment—you here?'
He is staring at her with wide, shocked eyes that are also full of an astonishment he is powerless to master. Is this the Betty he had parted from on that awful Christmas morning? this the wretched woman, clammy-handed, dishevelled, reckless of all save her own mastering agony, who—her haggard mother-eyes unable to attain the boon of any tears—had hoarsely forbidden him her presence for ever? Can this be she—this hovering vision of lace and gauze—that has floated towards him on the wings of the night, and now lifts to his, eyes that in this light look as clear as Peggy's—cheeks whose carnations seem no less lovely and real? Before his confused consciousness, the two visions—of that Betty and of this—inextricably entangled, and yet irrevocably separated, pass and repass; and he continues standing, wordlessly, stupidly staring, in a horror and a wonder that are beyond the weight of his volition to conquer, at the woman before him.
After her last sentence she is wordless too, and also stands looking at him, mute and full, as if she had forgotten his face, and were learning it off by heart again, her factitious gaiety for the moment died down and gone in the silent starlight. It is he who first speaks.
'You—you came here to see your children?'
'To see my children?' repeats she. 'Ha! ha! Yes, that was the reason I gave at home; and a very pretty and laudable one too, was not it? To see my children! But, as it happens, a woman has often more than one reason. I had more than one.'
She has lapsed into her flippant gaiety again, and now pauses as if expecting him to inquire into the nature of the other reason to which she alludes; but if so, he does not gratify her. He is still fighting with the horror of that double consciousness. Can this be the woman to whom in that icy winter dawning his whole soul had gone out in such an overpowering passion of pity? And if it be indeed she, has she clean forgotten the sacred agony of their last farewell? Her laugh is still dissonantly jarring on his stunned ear, when, finding it hopeless any longer to wait for questioning on his part, she resumes:
'It is always well to kill two birds with one stone—is not it?' says she, looking hardily into his eyes. 'Pardon the homeliness of the expression! You know that reports reach even quiet places—Harborough, for instance. Well, such a report—a canard probably, but still there was something oddly circumstantial about it—was spreading there yesterday about a—person—I—used—to know—rather well—have some interest in—in fact——'
She pauses again; her words have, for the last half of her speech, come draggingly, with a little break between each, and not for one instant does her eye release him. But again he makes no comment. Her breath is coming perceptibly quicker when she next takes up her theme.
'You do not ask what the report was? No? I fear my little tale does not interest you. It would perhaps be civiller on your part if you could pretend that it did; perhaps you will think that it improves as it goes on. Well, the subject of the report is a man; and the report itself—do not you think that it was the simplest plan on my part to come and verify it in person?—is that he is going to take to his bosom a—ha! ha! I never can help laughing when I think of it—a—guess! No; you would never guess—a sack of pota——'