“Don’t tell her, Miss Marchant. I would not for worlds have her know. It would do no good. It might make her miserable. Women are so sensitive, even about the past, and I fear this affair is going on in the present.”
“Don’t tell her!” echoed Sophy. “You mean my sister! And the man is—Jack! Oh, what a wretch he must be!”
“Weak rather than wicked, perhaps. Don’t be too hard upon him in your innocence of life. When a man has forged fetters of that kind it ain’t easy to break them.”
“A man so fettered has no right to marry. It would break her heart if she knew.”
“She need not know. You won’t tell her; and you may be sure I shan’t. But you are a girl with strong sense; and you love your sister. I thought it only right that you should know.”
“You may be mistaken.”
“Hardly likely. It is an open secret that he established her in lodgings and paid for her education. And over and above that evidence there is the fact that he still visits her. I met him leaving her rooms only a few days ago.”
“The wretch! The hypocrite! He seems to idolize Eve!”
“And your sister is happy in that idolatry. For pity’s sake, Miss Marchant, don’t let her see the seamy side of a husband’s character.”
Eve came towards the archway at this moment.
“You have lost ever so many amusing stories,” she said to Sophy. “Your banjoist is the most entertaining person I have met this season, Mr. Sefton, and he has made us all oblivious of time. I have just discovered that it is ever so much past six.”
“ ‘Ever so much’ meaning a quarter of an hour,” retorted Sefton, laughing.
He dropped a fold of the brocade drapery as Eve drew near, and the portrait was hidden before her face appeared in the curtained arch.
He looked at her, trying to recall his feelings of a time gone by, when he had been—or had fancied himself—in love with her. Oh, what a weak, hesitating love that had been, as measured against his devotion to this scum of the lagoons—this gutter-bred minx who had scorned him!
“A preposterous minx!” he repeated to himself by-and-by, when he was alone. “I thank thee, child, for teaching me that word. Well, I have sown the wind; I wonder whether I shall have a prosperous harvest, and reap the whirlwind?”
XXVII
“Thou Mayst Be False and Yet I Know It Not”
Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton had assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional order of womankind who, in honour and discretion, are on a level with wise and honourable men. He had known the young lady quite long enough to know that, although sharp and clever, she was shallow-brained, impulsive, and emotional. He was very sure that with every desire to spare her sister pain she would end by telling Eve of her husband’s infidelity. The secret would be kept for some days, perhaps, or even for some weeks; but it would be as a consuming fire, and would ultimately burst into flame—a flame that would devastate his rival’s home.
The more scathing that whirlwind which was to come from the wind of his sowing, the happier the result for Sefton. It was in vain that Lisa had denied her son’s paternity. In Sefton’s mind there was no shadow of doubt that Vansittart had been, and even now was her lover—and it was for love of Vansittart that his, Sefton’s, honourable attachment had been scorned by her. King Cophetua had offered himself to the beggar-maid, and the beggar-maid had refused him. Was that a humiliation for a man to forgive? Was that a disappointment to go unavenged? All the latent malignity of Sefton’s nature was aroused into active life by that fierce passion of jealousy.
He had not misinterpreted Sophy’s character. She was very silent during the homeward drive with her sister, lolling back in the victoria, looking vacantly at the carriages and the people as they passed.
“How tired you look, Sophy!” Eve said, as they crossed the path, where the carriages and riders and loungers had dwindled considerably within the past week. “I fancy even you begin to feel you have had enough of gadding about?”
“Yes, I have had enough, more than enough,” Sophy answered, with a little choking sob.
She could no more suppress her own feelings, bear her own troubles, and be dumb, than a child can. It was quite as much as she could do to keep herself from crying, in the broad light of summer evening and Hyde Park.
“My poor Sophy, what has happened to distress you?” Eve asked affectionately. “You and Mr. Sefton had such a long confabulation in that inner room. I really thought the crisis had come.”
“There was no crisis; there never will be. You were right. He was only fooling me. All his fine speeches, his sentimental talk—his way of holding one’s hand as if he would like to squeeze it, and was only prevented by his deep respect for one—he did squeeze it at the carriage door that night when we stayed so late at Mrs. Macpherson’s dance—it all meant nothing—less than nothing.”
“But how do you know, Sophy?” Eve asked earnestly. “He can’t have told you that he doesn’t care for you?”
“No; but he can have told me that he is in love with another woman—a lowborn, ignorant creature, who can do nothing but sing and strut about the stage in the boldest, horridest way, showing her lace petticoats and her legs,” said Sophy, disgustedly, forgetting how she had admired Signora Vivanti.
“Do you mean the singer at the Apollo?” asked Eve.
“Yes, Signora Vivanti. He is in love with her, if you please, and she has refused him.”
Eve remembered her husband’s explanation of Lisa’s letter.
“He told you this—chose you for his confidante. How odd!”
“Rather bad form, wasn’t it? I fear I had been too—what young Theobald calls—coming on. I
