“Julia,” he said, getting up from his chair, and going over to where she sat on a sofa, “Julia, it is horrid to hear you speak of yourself in that way. I will not have it. You are not such a one as the Iscariot.” And as he spoke to her, he found her hand in his.
“I wish you had my burden, Harry, for one half day, so that you might know its weight.”
“I wish I could bear it for you—for life.”
“To be always alone, Harry; to have none that come to me and scold me, and love me, and sometimes make me smile! You will scold me at any rate; will you not? It is terrible to have no one near one that will speak to one with the old easiness of familiar affection. And then the pretence of it where it does not, cannot, could not, exist! Oh, that woman, Harry;—that woman who comes here and calls me Julie! And she has got me to promise too that I would call her Sophie! I know that you despise me because she comes here. Yes; I can see it. You said at once that she was not wholesome, with your dear outspoken honesty.”
“It was your word.”
“And she is not wholesome, whosever word it was. She was there, hanging about him when he was so bad, before the worst came. She read novels to him—books that I never saw, and played écarté with him for what she called gloves. I believe in my heart she was spying me, and I let her come and go as she would, because I would not seem to be afraid of her. So it grew. And once or twice she was useful to me. A woman, Harry, wants to have a woman near her sometimes—even though it be such an unwholesome creature as Sophie Gordeloup. You must not think too badly of me on her account.”
“I will not;—I will not think badly of you at all.”
“He is better, is he not? I know little of him or nothing, but he has a more reputable outside than she has. Indeed I liked him. He had known Lord Ongar well; and though he did not toady him nor was afraid of him, yet he was gentle and considerate. Once to me he said words that I was called on to resent;—but he never repeated them, and I know that he was prompted by him who should have protected me. It is too bad, Harry, is it not? Too bad almost to be believed by such as you.”
“It is very bad,” said Harry.
“After that he was always courteous; and when the end came and things were very terrible, he behaved well and kindly. He went in and out quietly, and like an old friend. He paid for everything, and was useful. I know that even this made people talk;—yes, Harry, even at such a moment as that! But in spite of the talking I did better with him then than I could have done without him.”
“He looks like a man who could be kind if he chooses.”
“He is one of those, Harry, who find it easy to be good-natured, and who are soft by nature, as cats are—not from their heart, but through instinctive propensity to softness. When it suits them, they scratch, even though they have been ever so soft before. Count Pateroff is a cat. You, Harry, I think are a dog.” She perhaps expected that he would promise to her that he would be her dog—a dog in constancy and affection; but he was still mindful in part of Florence, and restrained himself.
“I must tell you something further,” she said. “And indeed it is this that I particularly want to tell you. I have not seen him, you know, since I parted with him at Florence.”
“I did not know,” said Harry.
“I thought I had told you. However, so it is. And now, listen:—He came down to Ongar Park the other day while I was there, and sent in his card. When I refused to receive him, he wrote to me pressing his visit. I still declined, and he wrote again. I burned his note, because I did not choose that anything from him should be in my possession. He told some story about papers of Lord Ongar. I have nothing to do with Lord Ongar’s papers. Everything of which I knew was sealed up in the count’s presence and in mine, and was sent to the lawyers for the executors. I looked at nothing; not at one word in a single letter. What could he have to say to me of Lord Ongar’s papers?”
“Or he might have written?”
“At any rate he should not have come there, Harry. I would not see him, nor, if I can help it, will I see him here. I will be open with you, Harry. I think that perhaps it might suit him to make me his wife. Such an arrangement, however, would not suit me. I am not going to be frightened into marrying a man, because he has been falsely called my lover. If I cannot escape the calumny in any other way, I will not escape it in that way.”
“Has he said anything?”
“No; not a word. I have not seen him since the day after Lord Ongar’s funeral. But I have seen his sister.”
“And has she proposed such a thing?”
“No, she has not proposed it. But she talks of it, saying that it would not do. Then, when I tell her that of course it would not do, she shows me all that would make it expedient. She is so sly and so false, that with all my eyes open I cannot quite understand her, or
