East Lynne Part 57

"To speak and act. Let there be plain truth between us at this interview, if there never has been before."

"I don't understand you."

"Naked truth, unglossed over," she pursued, bending her eyes determinately upon him. "It must be."

"With all my heart," returned Sir Francis. "It is you who have thrown out the challenge, mind."

"When you left in July you gave me a sacred promise to come back in time for our marriage; you know what I mean when I say 'in time,' but--"

"Of course I meant to do so when I gave the promise," he interrupted.

"But no sooner had I set my foot in London than I found myself overwhelmed with business, and away from it I could not get. Even now I can only remain with you a couple of days, for I must hasten back to town."

"You are breaking faith already," she said, after hearing him calmly to the end. "Your words are not words of truth, but of deceit. You did not intend to be back in time for the marriage, or otherwise you would have caused it to take place ere you went at all."

"What fancies you do take up!" uttered Francis Levison.

"Some time subsequent to your departure," she quietly went on, "one of the maids was setting to rights the clothes in your dressing-closet, and she brought me a letter she found in one of the pockets. I saw by the date that it was one of those two which you received on the morning of your departure. It contained the information that the divorce was p.r.o.nounced."

She spoke so quietly, so apparently without feeling or pa.s.sion, that Sir Francis was agreeably astonished. He should have less trouble in throwing off the mask. But he was an ill-tempered man; and to hear that the letter had been found to have the falseness of his fine protestations and promises laid bare, did not improve his temper now.

Lady Isabel continued,--

"It would have been better to have undeceived me then; to have told me that the hopes I was cherishing for the sake of the unborn child were worse than vain."

"I did not judge so," he replied. "The excited state you then appeared to be in, would have precluded your listening to any sort of reason."

Her heart beat a little quicker; but she stilled it.

"You deem that it was not in reason that I should aspire to be the wife of Sir Francis Levison?"

He rose and began kicking at the logs; with the heel of his boot this time.

"Well, Isabel, you must be aware that it is an awful sacrifice for a man in my position to marry a divorced woman."

The hectic flushed into her thin cheeks, but her voice sounded calm as before.

"When I expected or wished, for the 'sacrifice,' it was not for my own sake; I told you so then. But it was not made; and the child's inheritance is that of sin and shame. There he lies."

Sir Francis half turned to where she pointed, and saw an infant's cradle by the side of the bed. He did not take the trouble to look at it.

"I am the representative now of an ancient and respected baronetcy," he resumed, in a tone as of apology for his previous heartless words, "and to make you my wife would so offend all my family, that--"

"Stay," interrupted Lady Isabel, "you need not trouble yourself to find needless excuses. Had you taken this journey for the purpose of making me your wife, were you to propose to do so this day, and bring a clergyman into the room to perform the ceremony, it would be futile. The injury to the child can never be repaired; and, for myself, I cannot imagine any fate in life worse than being compelled to pa.s.s it with you."

"If you have taken this aversion to me, it cannot be helped," he coldly said, inwardly congratulating himself, let us not doubt, at being spared the work of trouble he had antic.i.p.ated. "You made commotion enough once about me making you reparation."

She shook her head.

"All the reparation in your power to make--all the reparation that the whole world can invent could not undo my sin. It and the effects must lie upon me forever."

"Oh--sin!" was the derisive exclamation. "You ladies should think of that beforehand."

"Yes," she sadly answered. "May heaven help all to do so who may be tempted as I was."

"If you mean that as a reproach to me, it's rather out of place," chafed Sir Francis, whose fits of ill-temper were under no control, and who never, when in them, cared what he said to outrage the feelings of another. "The temptation to sin, as you call it, lay not in my persuasions half so much as in your jealous anger toward your husband."

"Quite true," was her reply.

"And I believe you were on the wrong scent, Isabel--if it will be any satisfaction to you to hear it. Since we are mutually on this complimentary discourse, it is of no consequence to smooth over facts."

"I do not understand what you would imply," she said, drawing her shawl round her with a fresh shiver. "How on the wrong scent?"

"With regard to your husband and that Hare girl. You were blindly, outrageously jealous of him."

"Go on."

"And I say I think you are on the wrong scent. I do not believe Mr.

Carlyle ever thought of the girl--in that way."

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"They had a secret between them--not of love--a secret of business; and those interviews they had together, her dancing attendance upon him perpetually, related to that, and that alone."

Her face was more flushed than it had been throughout the interview. He spoke quietly now, quite in an equal tone of reasoning; it was his way when the ill-temper was upon him: and the calmer he spoke, the more cutting were his words. He need not have told her this.

"What was the secret?" she inquired, in a low tone.

"Nay, I can't explain all; they did not take me into their confidence.

They did not even take you; better, perhaps that they had though, as things have turned out, or seem to be turning. There's some disreputable secret attaching to the Hare family, and Carlyle was acting in it, under the rose, for Mrs. Hare. She could not seek out Carlyle herself, so she sent the young lady. That's all I know."

"How did you know it?"

"I had reason to think so."

"What reason? I must request you to tell me."

"I overheard sc.r.a.ps of their conversation now and then in those meetings, and so gathered my information."

"You told a different tale to me, Sir Francis," was her remark, as she turned her indignant eyes toward him.

Sir Francis laughed.

"All stratagems are fair in love and war."

She dared not immediately trust herself to reply, and a silence ensued.

Sir Francis broke it, pointing with his left thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the cradle.

"What have you named that young article there?"

"The name which ought to have been his by inheritance--'Francis Levison,'" was her icy answer.