“You must think me a very patient fellow, my dear! And ’pon my honour,” slowly, “I begin to believe I must be.”
“Ambrose, you have made a joke! D’ye hear, that was a joke! What’s come to you?” She was laughing hysterically. “And to do it when you must be cursing yourself for not taking the chance to get rid of me and start afresh! A new wife who would be English and proper and suitable and all the things I couldn’t be to save my life!”
“And wouldn’t be if you could? No, steady! no more of this, please. Quiet!”
His firm hand on her shoulder helped Eveleen to choke back the screams which threatened to burst forth, but she grasped the hand convulsively and held fast to it. “No, I’ll be good, I’ll be good! I didn’t mean—— But tell me now—Ambrose, tell me—what have I done? How have I disappointed you? How will I ever put things right if I don’t know what’s wrong?”
Panting painfully, she leaned half out of the bed, still gripping his hand with both hers, her eyes searching his face. Richard Ambrose, hating a scene at least as much as most Englishmen, wriggled uncomfortably. “Really, my dear, I don’t know—— Why”—with a sudden bright idea—“I thought it was you who were disappointed. Give you my word I did.”
“Then you had no business to. But what is it was wrong with me? It ain’t as though you didn’t know what I was like. We had known one another so long——”
“True.” He carried the war boldly into the enemy’s country. “But it was so long ago that I had forgot the changes time must bring. I had lived too much alone: I was an old man before I was a young one. But looking back, I thought—I hoped—I might succeed in making you happy. I was mistaken, and by involving you in my mistake I wrought you an irreparable injury.”
“Ambrose!” Eveleen was as easily diverted as a child. Her eyes filled with tears, her lip trembled. “What are you saying—a mistake, injury? That you have injured me, would you say?”
“Don’t I know from your own lips that you are the most miserable woman in the world?” he asked bitterly, but it must be confessed, with a feeling of shame.
“I didn’t say it! I did not! How can you——?”