Her husband stared at her, motionless in his chair.
She unclosed her eyes wearily: "That was all—except—the other one—the little one with the frizzy hair—Munger. He saw me there. He knew that Waudle had the adjoining rooms. So then, very early, I came back to New York, badly scared, and met my maid at the station and pretended to mother that I had just arrived from Westchester. And that night I went back to the Assembly. But—ever since that night I—I have been—paying money to Adalbert Waudle. Not much before I married you, because I had very little to pay. But all my allowance has gone that way—and now—now he wants more. And I haven't it. And I'm sick——"
The terrible expression on her husband's face frightened her, and, for a moment, she faltered. But there was more to tell, and she must tell it though his unchained wrath destroy her.
"You'll have to wait until I finish," she muttered. "There's more—and worse. Because he came here the night I—went to Silverwood. He saw me leave the house; he unsealed and read the note I left on the library table for you. He knows what I said—about Jim Desboro. He knows I went to him. And he is trying to make me pay him—to keep it out of the—the Tattler."
Clydesdale's congested face was awful; she looked into it, thought that she read her doom. But the courage of despair forced her on.
"There is worse—far worse," she said with dry lips. "I had no money to give; he wished to keep the seven thousand which was his share of what you paid for the forged porcelains. He came to me and made me understand that if you insisted on his returning that money he would write me up for the Tattler and disgrace me so that you would divorce me. I—I must be honest with you at such a time as this, Cary. I wouldn't have cared if—if Jim Desboro would have married me afterward. But he had ceased to care for me. He—was in love with—Miss Nevers; or she was with him. And I disliked her. But—I was low enough to go to her in my dire extremity and—and ask her to pronounce those forged porcelains genuine—so that you would keep them. And I did it—meaning to bribe her."
Clydesdale's expression was frightful.
"Yes—I did this thing. And worse. I—I wish you'd kill me after I tell you! I—something she said—in the midst of my anguish and terror—something about Jim Desboro, I think—I am not sure—seemed to drive me insane. And she was married to him all the while, and I didn't know it. And—to drive her away from him, I—I made her understand that—that I was—his—mistress——"
"Good God!"
"Wait—for God's sake, wait! I don't care what you do to me afterward. Only—only tell that woman I wasn't—tell her I never was. Promise me that, whatever you are going to do to me—promise me you'll tell her that I never was any man's mistress! Because—because—I am—ill. And they say—Dr. Allen says I—I am going to—to have a baby."