This Man's Wife Part 96

But it was in vain. Something seemed to be tearing these scales away-- something seemed to be rending that thick veil of love, and the voices she had so long quelled were clamouring to be heard, and making her ears sing with the terrible tale they told.

She writhed in spirit. She denied it all as a calumny, but as she walked to and fro there the tiny voices in her soul seemed to be ringing out the destruction of her idol, and to her swimming eyes it seemed tottering to its fall.

"You are very strange," he said roughly. "What's the matter? I thought you were going to tell me about Julia and Steve."

"I am," she cried at last, as if mastering herself after some terrible spasm. "Robert, I have been told something to-day that makes me tremble."

"Some news?" he said coolly.

"Yes, news--terrible news."

"Let's have it--if you like," he said. "I don't care. It don't matter, unless it will do you good to tell it."

Her face was wrung by the agony of her soul as she heard his callous words. The veil was being terribly rent now; and as her eyes saw more clearly, she tried in vain to close her mental sight; but no, she seemed forced to gaze now, and the idol that was tottering began to show that it was indeed of clay.

"Well, don't look like that," he said. "A man who has been transported is pretty well case-hardened. There _is_ no worse trouble in life."

"No worse?" she panted out in a quick, angry way, as words had never before left her lips; "not if he lost the love and trust of wife and child?"

"Well, that would be unpleasant," he said coolly. "Perhaps the poor wretch would be able to get over it in time. What is your news?"

"I have heard you freshly accused to-day of that old crime, of which you were innocent."

"Of which I was innocent, of course," he said coolly. "Is that all?"

She did not answer for a few minutes, and then as he half rose impatiently, as if to go, she said excitedly: "That case I brought over, Robert."

"Case?" he said with a slight start.

"From the old house."

"Well--what about it?"

"Tell me at once, or I shall go mad. What did it contain?"

"Papers. I told you when I wrote."

"That would set him free," the voices in her heart insisted.

"Who has been setting you to ask about that, eh?" She did not reply.

"You did not keep faith with me," he cried angrily. "You have been telling Sir Gordon, or that Bayle."

"I told no one," she said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Hah!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with a sigh of relief.

"Stephen Crellock has told Julia what she--and I--declare is false."

"Stephen Crellock is a fool," he cried quickly. "Go and fetch Julia here. She must be talked to."

"Robert! my husband," cried Mrs Hallam, throwing herself upon her knees and catching his hands, "you do not speak out. Why do you not pa.s.sionately say it is false? How dare he accuse you of such a crime!

You do not speak!"

She gazed up at him wildly.

"What do you want me to say?" he cried angrily. "Do you think me mad, woman? Here, let's have an end of all this nonsense. What does Crellock say?" She could not speak for a few minutes, so overladen was her heart; and when she did, the words were hoa.r.s.e that fell upon his ears.

"He said--he told our simple, loving girl, whom I have taught to trust in and reverence her martyred father's name; whose faith has been in your innocency of the crime for which you were sent here--the girl I taught to pray that your innocence might be proved--"

"Will you go on?" he cried brutally. "I'm sick of this. Now, what did he say?"

"That--Oh, Robert, my husband, I cannot say it! His words cannot be true!"

"Will you speak?" he cried. "Out with it at once! When will you grow to be a woman of the world, and stop this childishness? Now what did the chattering fool say?"

"That the box I brought over contained the proceeds of the bank robbery--money that you had hidden away."

Millicent Hallam started up and gazed about her with a dazed look, as if she were startled by the words she heard--words that seemed to have come from other lips than hers; and then she pressed her hands to her heaving bosom as her husband spoke.

"Stephen Crellock must be getting tired of his leave," he said coolly.

"An idiot! He had better have kept his tongue between his teeth. How came he to be chattering about that? If he don't mind--" He did not finish the sentence, and his wife's eyes dilated as she gazed at him in a horrified way.

"You do not deny it!" she said at last. "You do not declare that this is all cruelly false!"

"No," he said slowly, "I am not going to worry myself about his words.

He can't prove anything."

"But it is a charge against your honour," she cried; "against me.

Robert! you will not let this go uncontradicted for an hour longer?"

"Stephen Crellock had better mind," said Hallam, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had not heard his wife.

"But, Robert--my husband! you will speak for your own sake--for your child's sake--for mine?"

There was a growing intensity in the words, whose tones rose to one of pa.s.sionate appeal.

He made an impatient motion that implied a negative, and she threw herself once more upon her knees at his feet.

"You will deny this atrocious charge?"

"If I am asked I shall deny it of course," he said coolly; "but you don't suppose I am going to talk about it without?"

"But--but--that man believes it to be true!"

"Well, let him."

"Robert--dear Robert," she cried, "you must not, you shall not treat it like that! It is as if you were indifferent to this dreadful statement."