Then after a brief pause she turned from me, as though to hide her face, and said—
“I know quite well, Mr Woodhouse, that you hold me in little esteem. I daresay that if I dared I should be your open enemy, but knowing the friendship my husband has for you, I am prevented from acting as I would perhaps otherwise act. I confess to you, however, that no one is better aware of my own failings than I am myself. People believe that because I like to amuse myself, I am a woman without a heart. But I tell you that George is the only man I care for, even though I may laugh and allow others to pay court to me. George will not believe me when I say this, but some day I will show you, as I will show him, the strength of my love for him. I will, in a word, redeem my character as a woman worthy to bear his honourable name.”
I was utterly dumbfounded at this sudden outburst of confidence. There was a strange catch of emotion in her voice by which I knew that the words came direct from her heart, that remorse had at last seized her, and she intended to make atonement for all the grief and pain she had caused the devoted man who was her husband.
“If I can assist you in any way in this, Lady Stanchester, I will willingly do so,” I replied, deeply in earnest.
She turned her handsome countenance to me, and I saw that her grey eyes were dimmed by tears.
“I ought not, I suppose, to make you my confidant,” she went on, “yet if you will really take pity upon me, a helpless woman, you can at least prevent the one thing I dread from becoming known—you can help me to show George that I love him fondly after all—that I will try to make him as happy as is my duty. You have no belief in me, that I know full well. You believe that if it suited my purpose I would betray any confidence of yours to-morrow, and laugh in your face for being such a fool as to trust me. That is my exact character, I admit; but if you will preserve the secret of Richard Keene’s return and promise to act as my friend as well as Lolita’s, I swear to you that I will keep faith with you and endeavour when the day comes—as it certainly must ere long—to show George my heart is his, and his alone.”
I could scarcely follow her true meaning, except that she was in deadly fear that the Earl should learn of the stranger’s presence at the Stanchester Arms.
I promised to remain secret and, if possible, to secure Warr’s silence, yet in her words there was some hidden meaning that even then I could not fathom. She seemed to anticipate an event in the near future by which her love for her husband would be sorely tried. How strange it was that she, gay and giddy woman that she was, had been seized by a genuine remorse on learning of the return of that dusty, down-at-heel stranger!
I looked at her and became convinced that the words she had spoken were by no means idle ones. Her slim white hand, laid upon the edge of my table, trembled, her pale lips were set, and in her grey eyes was a strange hard light as she said—
“Then I trust you, as you will trust me. In future, Mr Woodhouse, we will be friends, and I assure you that you will find your friendship has not been misplaced.”