“Yes,” said Mrs. Gilbert.
“And then,” continued Mrs. Farrell, keeping her eyes on her work and knitting faster and faster, “if she has any heart at all, it must be half broken to think of what she’s done. The falsest coquette that ever was would feel like bowing down to true love in a man; and what is she to do if ever the worst comes to the worst and she finds she’s afraid she doesn’t love him? She must know that his good faith is ten million times stronger than her looks, and that it has a claim which she must try to answer somehow. Shall she marry him out of pity, and put him to the shame of finding it out some day? That would be the worst kind of treachery. No, no; she couldn’t do that! And can she tell him how wicked she has been, and ask him never to see her face or breathe her name or hear it spoken again? That would be easy, if it were only for her! But if she did this, if she could have the courage to kill his faith in her with such a blow as that, and to blacken his life with shame for having loved her, what better would she be than a murderess?”
She grew pale as she spoke, but no tremor now shook the hoops in her ears; she only wrought the more swiftly and kept her eyes upon the flying needle, while a kind of awe began to express itself in the gaze that Mrs. Gilbert bent upon her.
“What should you think then of the power of a pretty face?” asked Mrs. Farrell, flashing a curious look of self-scorn upon her. “What could the pretty face do for her, or for him? Could it help her to forgive herself, or help him to forget her? And which would have the greatest claim to the pity of the spectators?—supposing there were spectators of the tragedy, and there nearly always are. Come, imagine some such woman, Mrs. Gilbert, and imagine her your daughter—you were imagining me your daughter, just now—and tell me what you would say to her. You wouldn’t know what to say, even to your own daughter? Oh! I thought you might throw some light upon such a case.” She had lifted her eyes with fierce challenge to Mrs. Gilbert’s, but now she dropped them again upon her work. “But what if the case were still worse? Can you imagine so much as its being worse?”
“Yes, I can imagine its being worse,” said Mrs. Gilbert, whose visage seemed to age suddenly with a premonition that a thing long dreaded, long expected, was now coming, in spite of all attempted disbelief.
“Oh yes, certainly! You were wondering just now that beauty didn’t have greater power! Suppose that even in all this wretchedness, this miserable daughter of yours was afraid— Ah! Mrs. Gilbert,” she cried, starting violently to her feet, “you were trying a minute ago—don’t you think I knew your drift?—to peep into my heart! How do you like to have it flung wide open to you?” She confronted Mrs. Gilbert, who had risen too, with a wild reproach, as if she had made the wrong another’s by tearing the secret of it from her own breast. Mrs. Gilbert answered her nothing, and in another instant she faltered, “Don’t blame him, don’t be harsh with him. But, oh, in the name of mercy, send him away!”
Chapter XII
IT was already dark when Gilbert knocked at his sister-in-law’s door. She was sitting in the chair from which she had risen at parting with Mrs. Farrell, and into which she sank again at her going. Gilbert sat down before her, but did not speak.
“Have you made up your mind when you shall go, William?” she asked, gently.
“I haven’t made up my mind that I shall go at all,” he answered, in a sullen tone.