His eyes looked wonderingly into mine.
“Do you mean my mother?” he asked.
I laid my head on his bosom, and whispered back—“I mean your child.”
I had all my reward for all that I had given up. I forgot Mr. Playmore; I forgot Gleninch. Our new honeymoon dates, in my remembrance, from that day.
The quiet time passed, in the by-street in which we lived. The outer stir and tumult of Parisian life ran its daily course around us, unnoticed and unheard. Steadily, though slowly, Eustace gained strength. The doctors, with a word or two of caution, left him almost entirely to me. “You are his physician,” they said; “the happier you make him, the sooner he will recover.” The quiet, monotonous round of my new life was far from wearying me. I, too, wanted repose—I had no interests, no pleasures, out of my husband’s room.
Once, and once only, the placid surface of our lives was just gently ruffled by an allusion to the past. Something that I accidentally said reminded Eustace of our last interview at Major Fitz-David’s house. He referred, very delicately, to what I had then said of the Verdict pronounced on him at the Trial; and he left me to infer that a word from my lips, confirming what his mother had already told him, would quiet his mind at once and forever.
My answer involved no embarrassments or difficulties; I could and did honestly tell him that I had made his wishes my law. But it was hardly in womanhood, I am afraid, to be satisfied with merely replying, and to leave it there. I thought it due to me that Eustace too should concede something, in the way of an assurance which might quiet my mind. As usual with me, the words followed the impulse to speak them. “Eustace,” I asked, “are you quite cured of those cruel doubts which once made you leave me?”
His answer (as he afterward said) made me blush with pleasure. “Ah, Valeria, I should never have gone away if I had known you then as well as I know you now!”
So the last shadows of distrust melted away out of our lives.
The very remembrance of the turmoil and the trouble of my past days in London seemed now to fade from my memory. We were lovers again; we were absorbed again in each other; we could almost fancy that our marriage dated back once more to a day or two since. But one last victory over myself was wanting to make my happiness complete. I still felt secret longings, in those dangerous moments when I was left by myself, to know whether the search for the torn letter had or had not taken place. What wayward creatures we are! With everything that a woman could want to make her happy, I was ready to put that happiness in peril rather than remain ignorant of what was going on at Gleninch! I actually hailed the day when my empty purse gave me an excuse for going to my banker’s correspondent on business, and so receiving any letters waiting for me which might be placed in my hands.