She pauses.
"Great heavens!" cries Rylton. "Why go on like this? Why go into it again? Was it my fault? At that time I was a poor man. I laid my heart at your feet, but"--drawing a long breath--"I _was_ a poor man. It all lay in that."
"Ah! You will throw that in my teeth always," says she--not violently now, not even with a touch of excitement, but slowly, evenly. "Even in the days to come. Yet it was not that that killed your love for me. There was something else. Go on. Let me hear it."
"There is nothing to hear. I beg of you, Marian, to----"
"To let you off?" says she, with a ghastly attempt at gaiety. "No, don"t hope for that. There is something--something that has cost _me_--everything. And I will learn it. No one"s love dies without a cause. And there is a cause for the death of yours. Be frank with me, now, in this our last hour. Make me a confession."
Five minutes ago she would have thrown her arms round him, and besought him, with tender phrases, to tell her what is on his mind.
Now she stands apart from him, with a cold, lifeless smile upon her still colder lips.
"No! Do not perjure yourself," says she quickly, seeing him about to speak. "Do you think I do not know? That I cannot see by your face that there is something? I have studied it quite long enough to understand it. Come, Maurice. The past is the past--_you_ have decided that--and it is a merely curious mood that leads me to ask you the secret of the great crime that has separated us. _My_ crime, _bien entendu!"_
Rylton turns away from her with an impatient gesture, and goes back to the hearthrug. To persist like this! It is madness!
"There was no crime," says he. "But"--frowning--"as we are on the subject, and as you compel me to it, I----"
"No, don"t speak. _Don"t!"_ says she quickly.
She seems to cower away from him. She had solicited his condemnation, yet when it came to the point she had no strength to bear it. And after all, is she had only known, he was merely going to accuse himself of having been over-foolish when he induced t.i.ta to ask her to Oakdean on a visit.
"As you will," says he listlessly. "I was merely thinking of----"
"I know--I know. Of course _she_ would make me out the worst in the world, and I have reason to know that her cousin, Miss Hescott, told you stories about me. There was a night when----
"When----"
"Ah, I was wrong there. I was merely thinking of----"
"Wrong!" says Rylton slowly.
His thoughts have gone back to that last interview with Margaret, and what she had said about his folly in asking Marian on a visit to Oakdean, considering all that had been said and done between them in the old time.
"You remember it, then?" asks Marian. She looks at him. Her face is still livid, and as she speaks she throws back her head and laughs aloud--such a cruel, hateful laugh! "Well, I know it--I lied. I lied then most abominably."
"Then?"
"That night on the balcony--I confess it. I know Minnie Hescott told you."
Rylton"s mind goes quickly back.
"That night," says he slowly, as if thinking, as if concentrating his thoughts, "the night you led me to where----"
He hesitates.
"Does it hurt you to name her in my presence?" asks Mrs. Bethune in a tone like velvet. "Well, spare yourself. Let us call her "she"--the immaculate "she." Now you can go on with safety."
Her tone, her sneer, so evidently directed at t.i.ta, maddens Rylton.
"You _say_ you lied that night," says he, with barely suppressed fury. "And--I believe you. I was on the balcony with you, and you told me then that you did not know where my wife was. At all events, you gave me the _impression_ that you did not know where she was.
You made me a bet--you can"t have forgotten it--that she was with her cousin in the garden. I took the bet, and then you led me to the arbour--the arbour where you _knew_ she was. All things seemed to swear against her--all things save her cousin, Minnie Hescott."
"Minnie Hescott!" Marian Bethune laughs aloud. "Minnie and Tom Hescott! Would a brother swear against a brother? Would a sister give a brother away? No. And I will tell you why. Because it is to the interest of each to support the other. Minnie Hescott would lie far deeper than I did to save her brother"s reputation, for with her brother"s reputation her own would sink. _I_ lied when I said I did not know where your precious wife was at that moment, but I lied for _your_ sake, Maurice--to save you from a woman who was betraying you, and who would drag you down to the very dust with her."
Rylton lifts his head.
"To what woman are you alluding?" asks he shortly, icily.
"To t.i.ta," returns she boldly. "I knew where she was that night; I knew she would be with her cousin at that moment--the cousin she had known and loved all her life. The cousin she had cast aside, _for the moment,_ to take your t.i.tle, and mount by it to a higher rank in life." She takes a step towards him, her large eyes blazing. _"Now_ you know the truth," says she, with a vehemence that shakes her.
"Your love may be dead to me, but you shall know _her_ as she is!
Faithless! False as h.e.l.l she is! _She_ shall not supplant me!"
She stands back from him, her hands outstretched and clenched. She looks almost superb in her wicked wrath.
Rylton regards her steadily.
"You are tired," says he coldly. "You ought to get some rest. You will sleep here to-night?"
There is a question in his tone.
"Why not? In this my old home--my home for years--your mother"s home."
"My mother is in Scotland," says he briefly.
Something is tearing at his breast. Her deliberate, her most cruel attack on t.i.ta has touched him to the quick.
"Don"t be frightened!" says Mrs. Bethune, bursting out laughing.
"What are you thinking of--your reputation?"
"No!"
Manlike, he refrains from the obvious return. But she, in her mad frenzy of despair and anger, supplies it.
"Mine, then? It is not worth a thought, eh? Who cares for me?
Whether I sink with the vile, or swim with the good? No! I"ll tell you what you are thinking of, Maurice." She lays her hand upon her throat quickly, as if stifling, yet laughs gaily. "You are thinking that that little _idiot_ may hear of my being here, and that she will make a fuss about it--all underbred people love a fuss--and that----"
She would have gone on, but Rylton has given up his neutral position on the hearthrug--he has made one step forward, his face dark with pa.s.sion.
"Not another word!" says he in a sharp, imperious tone. "Not another word about--MY WIFE!"
The last two words explain all. Mrs. Bethune stand still, as if struck to the heart.
For a full minute she so stands, and then--"You are right. I should not be here," says she. She turns, and rests her eyes steadily on him. "So _that_ is my fault," says she, "that you love--_her!"_
Shame holds him silent.
"You _do_ love her?" persists she, playing with her misery, insisting on it. She lays her hand upon her heart as if to stay its beating. Is it going to burst its bonds? Oh, if it only might, and at this moment! To think that she--that _girl_--should take her place! And yet, had she not known? All through, had she not known?
She had felt a superst.i.tious fear about her, and now--"You do not speak?" says she. "Is it that you cannot? G.o.d knows I do not wonder!