She pulled off her long gloves, and let her sealskin cape fall at her feet, while I put down my pen, and, rising, stood with my back to the fire.
With her she had brought the odour of violets, the same that I remembered years ago; the same perfume that always stirred sad memories within me.
“You don’t welcome me very warmly,” she said in a disappointed tone, as she grasped my hand, and looked steadily into my eyes.
“No,” I said sternly. “Last night I told you that a woman had embittered my life. The woman I referred to was yourself.”
“Ah,” she said, striving to suppress a sob, “Forgive me! I—I was mad then. I loved you; but I did not apprehend the consequence.”
“Love? What nonsense to speak of it, when through your baseness I have been almost ruined. Think of your actions on the day before you left me; how you took from that drawer a signed blank cheque, with which you drew six hundred pounds,—nearly all the money I possessed,—and then fled with your lover. Is that the way a woman shows her affection?”
Her head was bowed in humiliation.
“Forgive me, Harold,” she said, with intense earnestness. “I admit that I wronged you cruelly, that I discarded the honest love you gave me; but you—you do not know how weak we women are when temptation is in our path. Cannot I now make amends?”
I shook my head sadly.
“Don’t say that you will not forgive,” she implored tearfully. “At least I am honest. My object in coming this afternoon was to repay the money I—I borrowed.” And she drew forth an envelope from her pocket and handed it to me.