“If it were not for you I should now be a happy girl. Thanks to you I am, however, one of the most wretched of all God’s creatures.”
“You need not be. You are petted in your own circle of friends, and your reputation remains unsullied.”
“I occupy a false position,” she declared. “What would Cyril say if he knew the truth?”
“A woman should never study the man who is to be her husband. It makes him far too conceited; and, moreover, she is sure to regret it in after-life.”
He was at times shrewdly philosophical, this scoundrel who held my wife beneath his thrall.
“I have you—only you—to thank for my present position. Believed by the world to be an honest, innocent girl, and accepted as such, I nevertheless fear from hour to hour that the truth may be revealed, and that I may find myself in the hands of the police. Death is preferable to this constant, all-consuming dread.”
“The unreasonableness and pertinacity of woman is extraordinary!” he exclaimed in a tone of impatience.
“What good can possibly result from this duel between us? Why not let us unite in defeating La Gioia?”
“That I refuse to do.”
“But our position is serious—most serious,” he pointed out. “Suppose that she discovers you!”