"I knew it,--I was sure of it!" said she, with a voice vibrating with a sort of triumph. "I always said you would come back,--that you had not, could not, forget me,--that you would no more desert me than a man deserts the comrade that has been shipwrecked with him. You see that I did not wrong you, Lionel."
Trafford covered his face with both his hands, but never uttered a word, while she went on: "Your friends, indeed, if that be the name for them, insisted that I was mistaken in you! How often have I had to hear such speeches as 'Trafford always looks to himself.' 'Trafford will never entangle himself deeply for any one;' and then they would recount some little story of a heartless desertion here, or some betrayal there, as though your life--your whole life--was made up of these treacheries; and I had to listen to these as to the idle gossip one hears in the world and takes no account of! Would you believe it, Lionel, it was only last week I was making a morning call at my mother-in-law's, and I heard that you were coming home to England to be married! Perhaps I was ill that day--I had enough to have made me ill--perhaps more wretched than usual--perhaps, who knows, the startling suddenness of the news--I cannot say how, but so overcome was I by indignation that I cried out, 'It is untrue,--every syllable of it untrue.' I meant to have stopped there, but somehow I went on to say--Heaven knows what--that I would not sit by and hear you slandered--that you were a man of unblemished honor--in a word, Lionel, I silenced your detractors; but in doing so, I sacrificed myself; and as one by one each visitor rose to withdraw,--they were all women,--they made me some little apology for whatever pain they had given me, and in such a tone of mock sorrow and real sarcasm that as the last left the room, I fell into a fit of hysterics that lasted for hours. 'Oh, Lucy, what have you done!' were the first words I heard, and it was _his_ mother who spoke them. Ay, Lionel, they were bitter words to hear! Not but that she pitied me. Yes, women have pity on each other in such miseries. She was very kind to me, and came back with me to the Priory, and stayed all the evening with me, and we talked of _you!_ Yes, Lionel, she forgave me. She said she had long foreseen what it must come to--that no woman had ever borne what I had--that over and over again she had warned him, conjuring him, if not for his own sake, for the children's--Oh, Lionel, I cannot go on!" burst she out, sobbing bitterly, as she fell at his feet, and rested her head on his knees. He carried her tenderly in his arms and placed her on a sofa, and she lay there to all seeming insensible and unconscious. He was bending anxiously over her as she lifted her eyelids and gazed at him,--a long steadfast look it was, as though it would read his very heart within him. "Well," asked she,--"well?"