Henry Hartsilver, the husband of her friend, Cora—her dearest friend! No breath of scandal concerning him had ever been whispered, and yet——
A sentence she had read in a novel flashed back into her mind: “The private lives of most men are sealed books to all but their companion, or companions, in guilt.”
Had Hartsilver’s private life been a sealed book to Cora, whose habit it had been, she remembered, to jest about her husband’s extraordinary respectability?
She clutched her lover’s hand, and stopped again in her walk.
“Charlie!” she exclaimed in an access of emotion, “if ever, after we are married, you grow tired of me—I want you—I want you to——”
Something seemed to choke her, and Preston caught her in his arms.
“Yootha, Yootha, my own darling!” he exclaimed huskily. “What are you saying? What are you thinking about? How can you imagine for a single instant I could grow tired of you, the one woman in the world I have ever loved! Don’t say what you were trying to, whatever it may have been. I don’t want to hear it. It pains me when you talk like that, my precious! You don’t—you can’t suppose I should be such a monster as to think of any woman but you?”
“Oh, but promise—you will promise—if you feel your love for me fading, no matter how little, to tell me about it? I couldn’t bear to think you pretended to love me when all the time you knew in your heart that in spite of yourself you were growing tired of me. So many men grow tired of their wives. Oh, yes, I have seen it again and again among my own friends—they marry, they love each other truly for a little while, then their love begins to cool, and then—oh, my darling, the bare thought of that possibility makes me feel faint and ill,” and she began to sob bitterly as she lay listless in his arms.
It was now nearly dark, and they were still a long way from the village. Preston tried to comfort her, assuring her again and again of the impossibility of his ever growing tired of her, or indeed loving her less, but for a long time she remained in deep depression.
And while this was happening Doctor Johnson and George Blenkiron were dining together at the former’s house in Wimpole Street.