Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'I tell you I had no husband; he was dead to me. Do you think I would allow a man like Mat to blight my boy's career—a poor creature, weak as water, and never able to keep straight; a man who could be cowed into giving up his own wife and children? I would have died a hundred times over before I would have let Cyril know that his father was a convict.'

Michael held his peace, but he shuddered slightly as he thought of Audrey. 'They will make her give him up,' he said to himself.

'Yes, I was happy then,' she went on. 'I always had an elastic temperament. I did not mind the poverty and shifts as long as Cyril was well and contented. I used to glory in giving up one little comfort after another, and stinting myself that he might have the books he needed when he was at Oxford. I used to live on his letters, and the day when he came home was a red-letter day.'

'And you never trembled at the idea that one day you might come face to face with your husband?'

'Oh no; such a thought never crossed my mind. I knew Mat too well to fear that he would hunt me out and make a scene. Another man would, in his place, but not Mat: he had always been afraid of me, and he dared not try it on. It was accident—mere accident—that made him cross my path yesterday. But I know I can manage him still, and you—you will not betray me, Captain Burnett?'

'I do not understand you,' he returned, almost unable to believe his ears. Could she really think that he would make himself a party to her duplicity?

'I think my meaning is sufficiently clear,' she replied, as though impatient at his denseness. 'Now you have heard my story, you cannot blame me; under the circumstances, you must own that my conduct was perfectly justifiable.'

'I am not your judge, Mrs. Blake,' he answered quietly; 'but in my opinion nothing could justify such an act of deception. None of us have any right to say, "Evil, be thou my good." When you deceived the world and your own children, by wearing widow's weeds, when all the time you knew you had a living husband, you were distinctly living a lie.'

'And I glory in that lie!' she answered passionately.

'Do not—do not!' he returned with some emotion; 'for it will bring you bitter sorrow. Do you think the son for whom you have sacrificed your integrity will thank you for it——' But before he could finish his sentence a low cry, almost of agony, stopped him. Ah, he had touched her there.