The table was laid for dinner, and there was a small decanter of sherry close by Geoff's hand. He filled a glass from it and drank it eagerly. Apparently involuntarily, Margaret extended her hand towards the decanter; but she instantly withdrew it, and resumed:
"You know well, Geoffrey Ludlow, that when you asked me to become your wife, I declined to give you any answer until you had heard the story of my former life. When I noticed your growing interest in me--and I noticed it from its very first germ--I determined that before you pledged yourself to me--for my wits had been sharpened in the school of adversity, and I read plainly enough that love from such a man as you had but one meaning and one result,--I determined that before you pledged yourself to me you should learn as much as it was necessary for you to know of my previous history. Although my early life had been spent in places far away from London, and among persons whom it was almost certain I should never see again, it was, I thought, due to you to explain all to you, lest the gossiping fools of the world might some day vex your generous heart with stories of your wife's previous career, which she had kept from you. Do you follow me?"
Geoffrey bowed his head, but did not speak.
"In that story I told you plainly that I had been deceived by a man under promise of marriage; that I had lived with him as his wife for many months; that he had basely deserted me and left me to starve,--left me to die--as I should have died had you not rescued me. You follow me still?"
She could not see his face now,--it was buried in his hands; but there was a motion of his head, and she proceeded:
"That man betrayed me when I trusted him, used me while I amused him, deserted me when I palled upon him. He ruined, you restored me; he left me to die, you brought me back to life; he strove to drag me to perdition, you to raise me to repute. I respected, I honoured you; but I loved him! yes, from first to last I loved him; infatuated, mad as I knew it to be, I loved him throughout! Had I died in those streets from which you rescued me, I should have found strength to bless him with my last breath. When I recovered consciousness, my first unspoken thought was of him. It was that I would live, that I would make every exertion to hold on to life, that I might have the chance of seeing him again. Then dimly, and as in a dream, I saw you and heard your voice, and knew that you were to be a portion of my fate. Ever since, the image of that man has been always present before me; his soft words of love have been always ringing in my ears; his gracious presence has been always at my side. I have striven and striven against the infatuation. Before Heaven I swear to you that I have prayed night after night that I might not be led into that awful temptation of retrospect which beset me; that I might be strengthened to love you as you should be loved, to do my duty towards you as it should be done. All in vain, all in vain! That one fatal passion has sapped my being, and rendered me utterly incapable of any other love in any other shape. I know what you have done for me--more than that, I know what you have suffered for me. You have said nothing; but do you think I have not seen how my weariness, my coldness, the impossibility of my taking interest in all the little schemes you have laid for my diversion, have irked and pained you? Do you think I do not know what it is for a full heart to beat itself into quiet against a stone? I know it all; and if I could have spared you one pang, I swear I would have done so. But I loved this man; ah, how I loved him! He was but a memory to me then; but that memory was far, far dearer than all reality! He is more than a memory to me now; for he lives, and he is in London and I have seen him!"