But then I’m prejudiced.”
“You talk,” I said, “as if you were ninety-nine.”
“For a women I very nearly am,” she said. “I’m thirty-five.”
She looked at me and smiled.
“Oh?” I said.
“I thought you more.”
“Which most women would take as an insult, but I as a compliment,” she said.
“Thank you, Philip.”
And then, before I had time to frame an answer, she went on, “What was really on that piece of paper you threw on the fire this morning?”
The suddenness of the attack caught me unprepared.
I stared at her and swallowed hard. “The paper?” I hedged.
“What paper?”
“You know perfectly well,” she said; “the piece of paper with Ambrose’s handwriting upon it, which you burned so that I should not see.”
I made up my mind then that a half-truth was better than a lie.
Although I felt the color flame into my face, I met her eyes.
“It was a piece torn from a letter,” I said, “a letter, I think, that he must have been writing to me.
He simply expressed himself as worried about expenditure.
There was only a line or two, I don’t even remember how it went.
I threw it in the fire because coming upon it, just at that moment, might have saddened you.”
Rather to my surprise, but to my relief also, the eyes, watching me so intently, relaxed.
The hands, holding the rings, fell on her lap.
“Was that all?” she said.
“I wondered so much… I could not understand.”
Thank heaven, though, she accepted my explanation.
“Poor Ambrose,” she said, “it was a constant source of worry to him, what he considered my extravagance; I wonder that you did not hear of it more often.
The life out there was so entirely different from the one he knew at home.
He never could bring himself to accept it.
And then—good heaven, I cannot blame him—I know at the bottom of his heart he bore resentment against the life I had been obliged to lead before I met him.
Those frightful debts, he paid them all.”
I was silent, but as I sat watching her, and smoking, I felt easier in my mind, no longer anxious.
The half-truth had been successful, and she was speaking to me now without strain.
“He was so generous,” she said, “those first months.
You cannot imagine, Philip, what it meant to me; at last someone I could trust, and, what was more wonderful still, someone I could love as well.
I think if I had asked him for anything on earth he would have given it to me.
That was why, when he became ill…” She broke off, and her eyes were troubled.
“That was why it was so hard to understand, the way he changed.”
“You mean,” I said, “that he wasn’t generous anymore?”
“He was generous, yes,” she said, “but not in the same way.
He would buy me things, presents, pieces of jewelry, almost as though he tried to test me in some way; I can’t explain it.
And if I asked him for any money, some little necessity for the house, something we had to have—he would not give me the money.
He used to look at me, with a strange brooding sort of suspicion; he would ask me why I wanted the money, how I intended to use it, was I going to give it to anyone… Eventually I had to go to Rainaldi, I had to ask Rainaldi, Philip, for money to pay the servants’ wages.”
She broke off again, and looked at me.
“Did Ambrose find out that you did that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“He had never cared for Rainaldi, I believe I told you so before.
But when he knew I went to him for money… that was the finish, he could not bear him to come to the villa anymore.
You would hardly credit it, Philip, but I had to go out furtively, when Ambrose was resting, and meet Rainaldi in order to get money for the house.”
Suddenly she gestured with her hands, and got up from her chair.
“Oh, God,” she said, “I did not mean to tell you all this.” She went over to the window, and pulled aside the curtain, and looked out at the driving rain.
“Why not?” I asked.