“Well, and what does her future concern me, pray?” asked the woman coldly.
“Only that you can save her,” he argued. “Think if, in a moment of despair, she took her life, what a burden of remorse would be yours.”
“There is no such word as remorse in my vocabulary,” she laughed. “If there were I should have entered a convent long ago.”
“Yes,” he said. “You speak the truth, Marigold. You are one of those few women who are, perhaps fortunately, untroubled by conscience. The past is to you a closed book, would that it were also to me! Would that I could forget completely that affair at which you and I exercised such dastardly cunning and scandalous duplicity. But I cannot, and it is for that reason I am here to beg—to beseech of you to at least save poor Lolita, who is being driven to extremity by despair!”
Lolita! I thought of her, desperate and unprotected, the victim of a vile and yet mysterious conspiracy—the victim of this woman who was, after all, her secret enemy. Heaven formed me as I was, a creature of affection, and I bowed to its decree in living but for love of her. Upon the tablet of my heart was graven Lolita, and death alone could efface it. I was no sensualist; thank heaven I had not brutalised my mind, nor contaminated the pure ray of my divinity. I loved with truth, with ardour, and with tenderest affection, from which had arisen all those ecstasies that constituted the heaven of loving. True, I was jealous—madly jealous. I was a tyrant in the passion that consumed me, but none can truly love who would receive it when divided.
Poverty claimed wealth—ambition craved for honour—kings would have boundless sway—despots would be gods—and I merely asked for love. Where was my crime in claiming a return for that already given? Or if it could never be mine, why should I dash at once to earth the air-drawn vision of felicity?
Fate was inscrutable; and sanctioned by its will, I determined to yield without a sign to my reward, be it love or be it misery.
Each pleasure has its pain, nor yet was ever mortal joy complete. In those days before the advent of Richard Keene in Sibberton I had been lulled by bliss so exquisite that reason should have told me it was but a dream. I had forgotten everything in the great vortex of love which had, till then, overwhelmed me. And as I stood there listening to every word that passed, I felt that I alone had power to save the woman I adored.
There was a plot, some vile dastardly plot, the mystery of which was inscrutable. And she was to be the victim. Was it right that I should remain silent and make no effort to rescue her from the doom which this man Keene declared must be hers?
“How can I save her, when I am in ignorance?” asked the woman, still persistent in the disclaimer I had so foolishly urged upon her.