“I can put your mind entirely at ease by assuring you, as I did after you detected me walking in Kensington Gardens, that I have had no lover besides yourself, Geoffrey,” she cried vehemently. “I have told you already that I worked to secure freedom of action in the future. Those letters were from one who rendered me considerable assistance.”
“What was his name?” I demanded quickly.
“I may not tell you that,” was her answer, uttered in a quiet, firm tone.
“Then, speaking plainly, you refuse, even now, to give me any elucidation whatever of this irritating mystery, or to allow me to obtain any corroboration of your remarkable story,” I said, with a sudden coldness.
She noticed my change of manner, and clung to me with uplifted face, pale and agitated. Her attempt to treat me as other than her husband had utterly failed.
“Ah! do not speak so cruelly,” she exclaimed, panting. “I—I really cannot bear it, Geoffrey—indeed I can’t. You must have seen that I loved you. I was, when I married, prepared to sacrifice all for your sake; nay, I did sacrifice everything until—until I was forced from you, and thrust back here to this place, that to me is little else than a gilded prison. Ah?” she cried, sobbing bitterly, and gazing around her in despair, “you cannot know how deeply I have sorrowed, how poignant has been the grief in the secret and inmost recesses of my heart; or how, through these months, while I have been travelling, I have longed to see you once again, and hear your voice telling me of your love. But, alas! without knowledge of the strange secret that seals my lips, you can know nothing—nothing!”
“I only know that I still adore you,” I said, with heartfelt fervency.
“Ah! I knew you did,” she exclaimed, raising her eager lips to mine in ecstasy. “I knew you would pity me when you came, yet I feared—I feared because I had lied to you, and deceived you so completely.” Then she kissed my lips, but I did not return her hot, passionate caress, although I confess it made my head reel.
“You have not forgiven,” she exclaimed, in a voice quivering with emotion, as she drew back. “You have not yet promised that you will still regard me as your wife.”
I hesitated. The startling fact of her true station, and the revelation of how ingeniously I had been tricked, caused me a slight revulsion of feeling. Somehow, as Grand Duchess she seemed an entirely different being to the plain, unassuming woman I had known as Ella. From the crown of her well-dressed hair to the point of her tiny, white kid shoe with its pearl embroidery, she was a patrician; the magnificence of her dress and jewels dazzled me, yet in her declarations of devotion her voice seemed to be marred by some indefinable but spurious ring.