"Not surprise him!" I repeated.
"Laura! remember what you are saying—you frighten me!"
"It is true," she said; "it is what I wanted to tell you to-day, when we were talking in your room.
My only secret when I opened my heart to him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian—you said so yourself.
The name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it."
I heard her, but I could say nothing.
Her last words had killed the little hope that still lived in me.
"It happened at Rome," she went on, as wearily calm and cold as ever.
"We were at a little party given to the English by some friends of Sir Percival's—Mr. and Mrs. Markland.
Mrs. Markland had the reputation of sketching very beautifully, and some of the guests prevailed on her to show us her drawings.
We all admired them, but something I said attracted her attention particularly to me.
'Surely you draw yourself?' she asked.
'I used to draw a little once,' I answered, 'but I have given it up.'
'If you have once drawn,' she said, 'you may take to it again one of these days, and if you do, I wish you would let me recommend you a master.'
I said nothing—you know why, Marian—and tried to change the conversation.
But Mrs. Markland persisted.
'I have had all sorts of teachers,' she went on, 'but the best of all, the most intelligent and the most attentive, was a Mr. Hartright.
If you ever take up your drawing again, do try him as a master.
He is a young man—modest and gentlemanlike—I am sure you will like him.
'Think of those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence of strangers—strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and bridegroom!
I did all I could to control myself—I said nothing, and looked down close at the drawings.
When I ventured to raise my head again, my eyes and my husband's eyes met, and I knew, by his look, that my face had betrayed me.
'We will see about Mr. Hartright,' he said, looking at me all the time, 'when we get back to England.
I agree with you, Mrs. Markland—I think Lady Glyde is sure to like him.'
He laid an emphasis on the last words which made my cheeks burn, and set my heart beating as if it would stifle me.
Nothing more was said.
We came away early.
He was silent in the carriage driving back to the hotel.
He helped me out, and followed me upstairs as usual.
But the moment we were in the drawing-room, he locked the door, pushed me down into a chair, and stood over me with his hands on my shoulders.
'Ever since that morning when you made your audacious confession to me at Limmeridge,' he said, 'I have wanted to find out the man, and I found him in your face to-night.
Your drawing-master was the man, and his name is Hartright.
You shall repent it, and he shall repent it, to the last hour of your lives.
Now go to bed and dream of him if you like, with the marks of my horsewhip on his shoulders.'
Whenever he is angry with me now he refers to what I acknowledged to him in your presence with a sneer or a threat.
I have no power to prevent him from putting his own horrible construction on the confidence I placed in him.
I have no influence to make him believe me, or to keep him silent.
You looked surprised to-day when you heard him tell me that I had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him.
You will not be surprised again when you hear him repeat it, the next time he is out of temper——Oh, Marian! don't! don't! you hurt me!"
I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my remorse had closed them round her like a vice.
Yes! my remorse.
The white despair of Walter's face, when my cruel words struck him to the heart in the summer-house at Limmeridge, rose before me in mute, unendurable reproach.
My hand had pointed the way which led the man my sister loved, step by step, far from his country and his friends.
Between those two young hearts I had stood, to sunder them for ever, the one from the other, and his life and her life lay wasted before me alike in witness of the deed.
I had done this, and done it for Sir Percival Glyde.
For Sir Percival Glyde.
I heard her speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was comforting me—I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her silence!
How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my own thoughts, I cannot tell.
I was first conscious that she was kissing me, and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to their sense of outward things, and I knew that I was looking mechanically straight before me at the prospect of the lake.
"It is late," I heard her whisper.