‘What would I not do?’
‘Eliza,’ he said, ‘can I trust you?’
‘You never have,’ she replied bitterly, ‘but you will need to now.’
He rode out of the yard.
She reached her room without meeting anyone, and sank down in an armchair. She longed to weep; but Fate, that had denied her the human joys which she desired, but for which she had not, apparently, been created, withheld that natural relief too. The repressed womanhood in her life seemed to confront her at every step. She lifted her head, and caught sight of herself in a long cheval glass, her wig, her weather-beaten face, her clumsy attitude. She had studied her reflection in the thing many and many a time in the years gone by, and it had become to her almost as an enemy—a candid enemy. As a girl going to county balls with her brother, she had stood before it trying to cheat herself into the belief that she was less plain in her evening dress than she had been in her morning one. Now she had lost even the freshness which had then made her passable. She told herself that, but for that, youth had given her nothing which age could take away, and she laughed against her will at the truth. She looked down at the pair of hands shining white in the mirror. They were her one ornament and she had taken care of them. How small they were! how the fingers tapered! how the pink of the filbert-shaped nails showed against the cream of the skin! They were beautiful. Yet they had never felt the touch of a man’s lips, never clung round a lover’s neck, never held a child. Everything that made a woman’s life worth living had passed her by. The remembrance of a short time when she had thought she held the Golden Rose for ever made her heart ache. It was Gilbert’s mother who had snatched it from her.
And friendship had been a poor substitute for what she had never possessed. The touch of love in the friendship of a man and a woman which makes it so charming, and may make it so dangerous, had been left out between herself and Robert. She lived before these days of profound study of sensation, but she knew that by instinct. The passion for inflicting pain which assails some people when they are unhappy had carried her tongue out of all bounds, and she realized that she was to pay for its short indulgence with a lasting regret. She did not suppose that Fullarton would not return, but she knew he would never forget, and she feared that she also would not cease to remember. She could not rid her mind of the image printed on it—his figure, as he stood in the long-room below with his face turned from her. She had suffered at that moment as cruelly as himself and she had revelled in her own pain.
When she had put off her riding-habit, she threw on a wrapper and lay down on the bed, for she was wearied, body and soul, and her limbs were beginning to remind her of her fall. It was chilly and she shivered, drawing up the quilt over her feet. The voices of two servants, a groom and a maid, babbled on by the ash-tree in the yard below; she could not distinguish anything they said, but the man’s tone predominated. They were making love, no doubt. Lady Eliza pressed her head into the pillow, and tried to shut out the sound.
She was half asleep when someone tapped at the door, and, getting no answer, opened it softly.
‘Is it Cecilia?’ said she, sitting up.
‘My dearest aunt, are you asleep? Oh, I fear I have awakened you.’