The situation was too painful to be endured. Arnold looked at her, this time, with a man's resolution in his eyes—spoke to her, this time, with a man's resolution in his voice. She took the letter.
"I beg your pardon, Sir," she said, with a sudden humiliation of tone and manner, inexpressibly shocking, inexpressibly pitiable to see. "I understand my position at last. I am a woman doubly betrayed. Please to excuse what I said to you just now, when I supposed myself to have some claim on your respect. Perhaps you will grant me your pity? I can ask for nothing more."
Arnold was silent. Words were useless in the face of such utter self-abandonment as this. Any man living—even Geoffrey himself—must have felt for her at that moment.
She looked for the first time at the letter. She opened it on the wrong side. "My own letter!" she said to herself. "In the hands of another man!"
"Look at the last page," said Arnold.
She turned to the last page, and read the hurried penciled lines. "Villain! villain! villain!" At the third repetition of the word, she crushed the letter in the palm of her hand, and flung it from her to the other end of the room. The instant after, the fire that had flamed up in her died out. Feebly and slowly she reached out her hand to the nearest chair, and sat down in it with her back to Arnold. "He has deserted me!" was all she said. The words fell low and quiet on the silence: they were the utterance of an immeasurable despair.
"You are wrong!" exclaimed Arnold. "Indeed, indeed you are wrong! It's no excuse—it's the truth. I was present when the message came about his father."
She never heeded him, and never moved. She only repeated the words
"He has deserted me!"
"Don't take it in that way!" pleaded Arnold—"pray don't! It's dreadful to hear you; it is indeed. I am sure he has not deserted you." There was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to stone. It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as this. In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder. "Come!" he said, in his single-hearted, boyish way. "Cheer up a little!"
She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.
"Didn't you say he had told you every thing?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Don't you despise a woman like me?"
Arnold's heart went back, at that dreadful question, to the one woman who was eternally sacred to him—to the woman from whose bosom he had drawn the breath of life.
"Does the man live," he said, "who can think of his mother—and despise women?"
That answer set the prisoned misery in her free. She gave him her hand—she faintly thanked him. The merciful tears came to her at last.
Arnold rose, and turned away to the window in despair. "I mean well," he said. "And yet I only distress her!"
She heard him, and straggled to compose herself "No," she answered, "you comfort me. Don't mind my crying—I'm the better for it." She looked round at him gratefully. "I won't distress you, Mr. Brinkworth. I ought to thank you—and I do. Come back or I shall think you are angry with me." Arnold went back to her. She gave him her hand once more. "One doesn't understand people all at once," she said, simply. "I thought you were like other men—I didn't know till to-day how kind you could be. Did you walk here?" she added, suddenly, with an effort to change the subject. "Are you tired? I have not been kindly received at this place—but I'm sure I may offer you whatever the inn affords."
It was impossible not to feel for her—it was impossible not to be interested in her. Arnold's honest longing to help her expressed itself a little too openly when he spoke next. "All I want, Miss Silvester, is to be of some service to you, if I can," he said. "Is there any thing I can do to make your position here more comfortable? You will stay at this place, won't you? Geoffrey wishes it."
She shuddered, and looked away. "Yes! yes!" she answered, hurriedly.
"You will hear from Geoffrey," Arnold went on, "to-morrow or next day. I know he means to write."
"For Heaven's sake, don't speak of him any more!" she cried out. "How do you think I can look you in the face—" Her cheeks flushed deep, and her eyes rested on him with a momentary firmness. "Mind this! I am his wife, if promises can make me his wife! He has pledged his word to me by all that is sacred!" She checked herself impatiently. "What am I saying? What interest can you have in this miserable state of things? Don't let us talk of it! I have something else to say to you. Let us go back to my troubles here. Did you see the landlady when you came in?"
"No. I only saw the waiter."
"The landlady has made some absurd difficulty about letting me have these rooms because I came here alone."
"She won't make any difficulty now," said Arnold. "I have settled that."
"You!"
Arnold smiled. After what had passed, it was an indescribable relief to him to see the humorous side of his own position at the inn.
"Certainly," he answered. "When I asked for the lady who had arrived here alone this afternoon—"
"Yes."
"I was told, in your interests, to ask for her as my wife."
Anne looked at him—in alarm as well as in surprise.
"You asked for me as your wife?" she repeated.
"Yes. I haven't done wrong—have I? As I understood it, there was no alternative. Geoffrey told me you had settled with him to present yourself here as a married lady, whose husband was coming to join her."
"I thought of him when I said that. I never thought of you."
"Natural enough. Still, it comes to the same thing (doesn't it?) with the people of this house."
"I don't understand you."
"I will try and explain myself a little better. Geoffrey said your position here depended on my asking for you at the door (as he would have asked for you if he had come) in the character of your husband."
"He had no right to say that."
"No right? After what you have told me of the landlady, just think what might have happened if he had not said it! I haven't had much experience myself of these things. But—allow me to ask—wouldn't it have been a little awkward (at my age) if I had come here and inquired for you as a friend? Don't you think, in that case, the landlady might have made some additional difficulty about letting you have the rooms?"
It was beyond dispute that the landlady would have refused to let the rooms at all. It was equally plain that the deception which Arnold had practiced on the people of the inn was a deception which Anne had herself rendered necessary, in her own interests. She was not to blame; it was clearly impossible for her to have foreseen such an event as Geoffrey's departure for London. Still, she felt an uneasy sense of responsibility—a vague dread of what might happen next. She sat nervously twisting her handkerchief in her lap, and made no answer.
"Don't suppose I object to this little stratagem," Arnold went on. "I am serving my old friend, and I am helping the lady who is soon to be his wife."
Anne rose abruptly to her feet, and amazed him by a very unexpected question.
"Mr. Brinkworth," she said, "forgive me the rudeness of something I am about to say to you. When are you going away?"
Arnold burst out laughing.
"When I am quite sure I can do nothing more to assist you," he answered.
"Pray don't think of me any longer."
"In your situation! who else am I to think of?"
Anne laid her hand