“Say as little as possible,” said Mrs. Outhouse—“except to make him understand that he has been in error in imputing fault to you.”
“He will never understand that,” said Mrs. Trevelyan.
A considerable time elapsed after that before she could bring herself to descend the stairs. Now that her husband was so near her, and that her aunt had assured her that she might reinstate herself in her position, if she could only abstain from saying hard words to him, she wished that he was away from her again, in Italy. She knew that she could not refrain from hard words. How was it possible that she should vindicate her own honour, without asserting with all her strength that she had been ill-used; and, to speak truth on the matter, her love for the man, which had once been true and eager, had been quelled by the treatment she had received. She had clung to her love in some shape, in spite of the accusations made against her, till she had heard that the policeman had been set upon her heels. Could it be possible that any woman should love a man, or at least that any wife should love a husband, after such usage as that? At last she crept gently down the stairs, and stood at the parlour-door. She listened, and could hear his steps, as he paced backwards and forwards through the room. She looked back, and could see the face of the servant peering round from the kitchen-stairs. She could not endure to be watched in her misery, and, thus driven, she opened the parlour-door. “Louis,” she said, walking into the room, “Aunt Mary has desired me to come to you.”
“Emily!” he exclaimed, and ran to her and embraced her. She did not seek to stop him, but she did not return the kiss which he gave her. Then he held her by her hands, and looked into her face, and she could see how strangely he was altered. She thought that she would hardly have known him, had she not been sure that it was he. She herself was also changed. Who can bear sorrow without such change, till age has fixed the lines of the face, or till care has made them hard and unmalleable? But the effect on her was as nothing to that which grief, remorse, and desolation had made on him. He had had no child with him, no sister, no friend. Bozzle had been his only refuge—a refuge not adapted to make life easier to such a man as Trevelyan; and he—in spite of the accusations made by himself against his wife, within his own breast hourly since he had left her—had found it to be very difficult to satisfy his own conscience. He told himself from hour to hour that he knew that he was right; but in very truth he was ever doubting his own conduct.
“You have been ill, Louis,” she said, looking at him.
“Ill at ease, Emily;—very ill at ease! A sore heart will make the face thin, as well as fever or ague. Since we parted I have not had much to comfort me.”
“Nor have I—nor any of us,” said she. “How was comfort to come from such a parting?”
Then they both stood silent together. He was still holding her by the hand, but she was careful not to return his pressure. She would not take her hand away from him; but she would show him no sign of softness till he should have absolutely acquitted her of the accusation he had made against her. “We are man and wife,” he said after awhile. “In spite of all that has come and gone I am yours, and you are mine.”
“You should have remembered that always, Louis.”
“I have never forgotten it—never. In no thought have I been untrue to you. My heart has never changed since first I gave it you.” There came a bitter frown upon her face, of which she was so conscious herself, that she turned her face away from him. She still remembered her lesson, that she was not to anger him, and, therefore, she refrained from answering him at all. But the answer was there, hot within her bosom. Had he loved her—and yet suspected that she was false to him and to her vows, simply because she had been on terms of intimacy with an old friend? Had he loved her, and yet turned her from his house? Had he loved her—and set a policeman to watch her? Had he loved her, and yet spoken evil of her to all their friends? Had he loved her, and yet striven to rob her of her child? “Will you come to me?” he said.
“I suppose it will be better so,” she answered slowly.
“Then you will promise me—” He paused, and attempted to turn her towards him, so that he might look her in the face.
“Promise what?” she said, quickly glancing round at him, and drawing her hand away from him as she did so.
“That all intercourse with Colonel Osborne shall be at an end.”
“I will make no promise. You come to me to add one insult to another. Had you been a man, you would not have named him to me after what you have done
