“You are wasting your breath,” I told her; “I don’t believe one word you say to me.”
“Believe Susan, then!” cried the reckless woman. “Let me bring her here. If she’s too shamefaced to own the truth, look at her—that’s all I ask—look at her, and judge for yourself!”
This was intolerable. In justice to Susan, in justice to Rothsay, I insisted on silence. “No more of it!” I said. “Take care how you provoke me. Don’t you see that I am ill? don’t you see that you are irritating me to no purpose?”
She altered her tone. “I’ll wait,” she said, quietly, “while you compose yourself.”
With those words, she walked to the window, and stood there with her back toward me. Was the wretch taking advantage of my helpless condition? I stretched out my hand to ring the bell, and have her sent away—and hesitated to degrade Susan’s mother, for Susan’s sake. In my state of prostration, how could I arrive at a decision? My mind was dreadfully disturbed; I felt the imperative necessity of turning my thoughts to some other subject. Looking about me, the letters on the table attracted my attention. Mechanically, I took them up; mechanically I put them down again. Two of them slipped from my trembling fingers; my eyes fell on the uppermost of the two. The address was in the handwriting of the good friend with whom Rothsay was sailing.
Just as I had been speaking of Rothsay, here was the news of him for which I had been waiting.
I opened the letter and read these words:
“There is, I fear, but little hope for our friend—unless this girl on whom he has set his heart can (by some lucky change of circumstances) become his wife. He has tried to master his weakness; but his own infatuation is too much for him. He is really and truly in a state of despair. Two evenings since—to give you a melancholy example of what I mean—I was in my cabin, when I heard the alarm of a man overboard. The man was Rothsay. My sailing-master, seeing that he was unable to swim, jumped into the sea and rescued him, as I got on deck. Rothsay declares it to have been an accident; and everybody believes him but myself. I know the state of his mind. Don’t be alarmed; I will have him well looked after; and I won’t give him up just yet. We are still bound southward, with a fair wind. If the new scenes which I hope to show him prove to be of no avail, I must reluctantly take him back to England. In that case, which I don’t like to contemplate, you may see him again—perhaps in a month’s time.”
He might return in a month’s time—return to hear of the death of the one friend, on whose power and will to help him he might have relied. If I failed to employ in his interests the short interval of life still left to me, could I doubt (after what I had just read) what the end would be? How could I help him? Oh, God! how could I help him?
Mrs. Rymer left the window, and returned to the chair which she had occupied when I first received her.