But in that moment I recollected how the Countess had defied him, and threatened him with a terrible exposure. Of what?
“And Marie Lejeune? Where is she?” inquired Lolita.
“She has disappeared, it seems. At least I don’t know where she is at this moment. For the present we need not be concerned about her. We have to deal with a shrewd and clever woman, whose future depends upon your future. If you live she must die,—if you die, she will live.”
He spoke the words with slow distinctness, his eyes fixed upon her, watching the effect of his utterances.
“How can I live?” she asked, in a low hoarse voice. “You know everything—you know my peril.”
“True. I know everything,” was the man’s reply. “I know, too, how you have suffered I know how Mr Woodhouse, loving you as he does, must also suffer. Believe me, Lady Lolita, although I am but a rough man unused nowadays to the ways of good society, I am not altogether devoid of sympathy for a woman, and that sympathy will cause me to guard the secret of your affection. I wish you to consider that, in me, instead of an enemy, you have a sincere friend. I am fully aware of the exposure which Mr Woodhouse might make to George, but it would not only be against my interests, but against yours.”
“Yet it would bring Marigold to her knees to beg forgiveness,” my love remarked.
“Yes. But surely you know that woman well enough to be aware that her vengeance would fall heavily upon you—that you would be hurled to ruin and disgrace before she herself would give way and fall.”
“I believed her to be my friend,” was Lolita’s remark.
“You only believed as others believe. There are many persons to whom she acts the false friend—her husband not excepted. You have only to sit in the smoking-rooms of certain London clubs in order to hear the expression of public opinion regarding her. The clubs always know more facts about a man’s wife than her own husband.”