“I am afraid so, he married you as Hugh Desmond, having a wife already,” his voice was hard and bitter.
She was up in arms at once. Every true woman can so easily forgive a cruel wrong done her if it is for Love.
“He loved me only, I am sure of that, and if he had another wife, at any rate he left her for me.”
The Doctor was wisely silent. The realisation of the wrong done to the child upstairs would come later.
“I have been so long away from England,” he said “that I have lost touch with the people there. I seem to have heard of the Reckaviles.”
It all came back to her when she lay on her sleepless bed that night. His hesitation and the delay in getting married, and then the secrecy, and the hurried flight to Italy. Yes, it was all clear now.
“Hugh, darling,” she said to herself, condoning the wrong, in her great love as is the way with a woman. “What you must have suffered.” She never doubted his love for her, but she knew vaguely that people in his station sometimes had to make loveless marriages for social reasons.
All was black and hopeless, but she must live on for her child’s sake. Relief came from the parched fever when she bent over the cot where the child lay, and a passionate flood of tears woke the sleeping boy, and the need for comfort was come. She rocked him in her arms, and sobbed out her broken little heart. The good Doctor was her one solace. With unselfish kindness he saw her through this time of horror, and fought inch by inch to help her forget. Each month an allowance arrived from the lawyer in London without explanation, for Hugh had arranged this with Curtis, though the lawyer had no idea who the lady was, and imagined it was one of Reckavile’s past fancies, who had been pensioned off.
It was to continue during her lifetime, for at the time there had been no thought of a further contingency.
Halley had retired from practice, but lingered on in Venice. When he thought suitable interval had elapsed, he came suppliant to Carlotta, his motives love and chivalry equally blended.