“If I knew the truth,” I said, “it would enable me to steer clear of pitfalls, and render your life happier and brighter.”
“You are posing as my husband,” she said, looking straight into my face with those wonderful eyes of hers. “Your self-sacrifice is surely great, Wilfrid, for one who entertains no affection. When a man loves he will do anything—he will ruin himself for the sake of a woman, as so many do. But when love is absent it is all so different.”
And she sighed and turned her head away. She was a neat, demure little figure in her cheap black dress, her small toque, and her black cotton gloves, with the false badge of matrimony underneath.
“I cannot for the life of me imagine what safeguard I am to you—pretending to be your husband.”
“Ah?” she said. “You will know everything some day—some day you will realise my awful peril,” and her mouth closed tightly as tears welled in her eyes. Did she refer to the crime in Charlton Wood? That afternoon we engaged apartments in what seemed to be a pleasant little house in Roundhay Road, kept by an honest old Yorkshire woman, who spoke broadly and welcomed us warmly. Therefore Tibbie obtained her trunk from the cloak-room, and took up her abode there, while I explained my enforced absence from my wife, saying that I was compelled to go to Bradford. Instead of that, however, I returned to my quarters in Commercial Street, and met her in Kirkgate at eleven o’clock next morning.
Ours was a strange, adventurous life in the days that followed, and were it not for the veil of mystery upon everything, and the grave suspicion which I still entertained of my dainty little companion, it would have all been very pleasant.
In order to kill time, as well as to avoid being met in Leeds together by our landlady, we visited the various outlying places of interest, Kirkstall with its ruined abbey and its umbrageous landscapes, the old church of Adel with the pretty glen, par excellence a walk for lovers, Cookridge Hall, Chapeltown, the village on the Great North Road where one obtains such magnificent views, and lastly the splendid old mansion of Temple Newsham, where walking in the park one sunny, afternoon Tibbie halted, and looking away to the distant Tudor mansion, said,—
“How strange life is, Wilfrid. Only two years ago I was staying here with Cynthia, and now you and I come here as working-class holiday makers. Ah!” she sighed, bitterly, “I was happy then, before—” and she did not conclude her sentence.
“Before what?” I asked, standing at her side beneath the great old elm with the sheep grazing quietly around.
“Before evil fell upon me,” she said, hoarsely, with poignant bitterness.