“We have heard it. I have heard it, and have been obliged to tell my sister that I had done so.”
“And who told you? Did you hear it from Harry Clavering himself?”
“I did. I heard it in part from him.”
“Then why have you come beyond him to me? He must know. If he has told you that he is engaged to marry me, he must also have told you that he does not intend to marry Miss Florence Burton. It is not for me to defend him or to accuse him. Why do you come to me?”
“For mercy and forbearance,” said Mrs. Burton, rising from her seat and coming over to the side of the room in which Lady Ongar was seated.
“And Miss Burton has sent you?”
“No; she does not know that I am here; nor does my husband know it. No one knows it. I have come to tell you that before God this man is engaged to become the husband of Florence Burton. She has learned to love him, and has now no other chance of happiness.”
“But what of his happiness?”
“Yes; we are bound to think of that. Florence is bound to think of that above all things.”
“And so am I. I love him too;—as fondly, perhaps, as she can do. I loved him first, before she had even heard his name.”
“But, Lady Ongar—”
“Yes; you may ask the question if you will, and I will answer it truly.” They were both standing now and confronting each other. “Or I will answer it without your asking it. I was false to him. I would not marry him because he was poor; and then I married another because he was rich. All that is true. But it does not make me love him the less now. I have loved him through it all. Yes; you are shocked, but it is true. I have loved him through it all. And what am I to do now, if he still loves me? I can give him wealth now.”
“Wealth will not make him happy.”
“It has not made me happy; but it may help to do so with him. But with me at any rate there can be no doubt. It is his happiness to which I am bound to look. Mrs. Burton, if I thought that I could make him happy, and if he would come to me, I would marry him tomorrow, though I broke your sister’s heart by doing so. But if I felt that she could do so more than I, I would leave him to her, though I broke my own. I have spoken to you very openly. Will she say as much as that?”
“She would act in that way. I do not know what she would say.”
“Then let her do so, and leave him to be the judge of his own happiness. Let her pledge herself that no reproaches shall come from her, and I will pledge myself equally. It was I who loved him first, and it is I who have brought him into this trouble. I owe him everything. Had I been true to him, he would never have thought of, never have seen, Miss Florence Burton.”
All that was, no doubt, true, but it did not touch the question of Florence’s right. The fact on which Mrs. Burton wished to insist, if only she knew how, was this, that Florence had not sinned at all, and that Florence therefore ought not to bear any part of the punishment. It might be very true that Harry’s fault was to be excused in part because of Lady Ongar’s greater and primary fault;—but why should Florence be the scapegoat?
“You should think of his honour as well as his happiness,” said Mrs. Burton at last.
“That is rather severe, Mrs. Burton, considering that it is said to me in my own house. Am I so low as that, that his honour will be tarnished if I become his wife?” But she, in saying this, was thinking of things of which Mrs. Burton knew nothing.
“His honour will be tarnished,” said she, “if he do not marry her whom he has promised to marry. He was welcomed by her father and mother to their house, and then he made himself master of her heart. But it was not his till he had asked for it, and had offered his own and his hand in return for it. Is he not bound to keep his promise? He cannot be bound to you after any such fashion as that. If you are solicitous for his welfare, you should know that if he would live with the reputation of a gentleman, there is only one course open to him.”
“It is the old story,” said Lady Ongar; “the old story! Has not somebody said that the gods laugh at the perjuries of lovers? I do not know that men are inclined to be much more severe than the gods. These broken hearts are what women are doomed to bear.”
“And that is to be your answer to me, Lady Ongar?”
“No; that is not my answer to you. That is the excuse that I make for Harry Clavering. My answer to you has been very explicit. Pardon me if I say that it has been more explicit than you had any right to expect. I have told you that I am prepared to take any step that may be most conducive to the happiness of the man whom I once injured, but whom I have always loved. I will do this, let it cost myself what it may; and I will do this let the cost to any other woman be what it may. You cannot expect that I should love another woman better than myself.” She said this, still standing, not without something more than vehemence in her tone. In her voice, in her manner, and in her eye there was that which amounted almost to ferocity. She was declaring that some sacrifice must be made, and
