It May Be True Volume Iii Part 7

But another glance at his face, and her heart sank within her, for its expression almost terrified her.

He closed the door and came and stood opposite to where she was, looking as though he would have struck her.

She quailed visibly before his menacing glance. Then resolutely regained the mastery over herself, and drawing up her figure proudly, she said,

"Do you know this is my room? I wonder how you dare come here."

"Your room? Well, what if it is, I care not," he replied. "I am reckless of everything."

"But I am not; and--and," she hesitated, and tried again to steady her beating heart, "what--what has happened, Charles, that you look so strangely?"

"Happened? Can you ask me what has happened, you who have wrecked the hopes of my whole life."

"I, Charles? You talk in riddles; I do not understand you."

"You dare not say that!" exclaimed he, hoa.r.s.ely. "You know well that I loved her with all my heart and soul, and you--you schemed to draw her from me. I would have laid down my life for her; and you guessed it, and told me she loved another, and, like a fool, I believed you. You have driven me to despair; her to a life-long living death; and this, all this, I have dared to come and tell you."

"It was no lie. She never loved you!"

"She did!" he cried, hotly; "I swear she did. I saw it; knew it but a few hours since."

"You have seen her?" asked Frances.

"Seen her! Yes; and I wish to G.o.d I had died before seeing her," and he clasped his hands over his damp brow in an agony of grief.

"See," he said, presently, "are you not satisfied with my sufferings?

Look here;" and he drew his hand across his forehead and temples, and showed the large drops that fell from them. "I loved her as my life. My life, do I say? She was more than life to me, and I have lost her; and this--this is your devil's work."

"Lost her!" echoed Frances, inquiringly.

He heeded her not; but walked the room with rapid strides, then gradually calmed again, and then again burst forth with the hopeless agony of his thoughts, as he recalled Amy's last words:

"_It is too late, I am married._"

"Aye," he said, despairingly, "too late to save us both; too late, indeed."

Frances could not listen calmly, or see unmoved the strong man's agony; but she never once repented the evil she had wrought, but rather gloried at heart in having so successfully separated him and Amy; and the more so now, because she saw how madly he loved her. She waited quietly, almost afraid to speak, until the paroxysm of grief had exhausted itself. Then she said, timidly,

"Too late, Charles. Did you say too late?"

But her words roused him to fury again.

"I did," he cried; "I said too late; G.o.d knows I was too late. A day, only a day earlier, and I should have been in time to save her!"

"To save Miss Neville? And from what?"

"From what?" he cried; "you are not satisfied with my sufferings, then?

but would drain the last bitter drop of agony in my cup--the telling; the naming--Oh, G.o.d! She is married!"

Married! Frances was not prepared for this. A mist swam before her eyes; a sudden faintness seized her, and she clung to the back of the sofa for support.

"Yes, married!" he cried, fiercely seizing her arm. "You would have me tell you, and you shall hear it too, and remember it to your dying day; and I--I saw her only an hour after she was lost to me for ever."

But Frances' tongue was stayed, and she never answered one word.

"You have driven me mad," he continued savagely, "and it is a mercy you have not a murder on your soul, for, by Heaven, I was tempted more than once to take my life on my road down here? Do you hear?" he cried.

"Oh, Charles! don't, don't talk so wildly: you will kill me!"

"Kill you! No, I don't wish to do that; I'll only wish you half the misery you have caused me, and that shall be your punishment and my revenge."

And then he turned to leave her; but Frances sprang forward and stopped him.

"Do not go away like that, Charles. Do not go, leaving almost a curse behind you. I have not been guilty of half the wickedness you accuse me of. I did say Miss Neville did not love you; but--but I believed it."

"You did not," he cried. "You hated and then you slandered her."

"And if I did, it was your fault; yours, for you taught me to love you."

"You love me! It is like the rest false, and a flimsy attempt to palliate your wickedness."

"No, no; it is true. I have loved you for years past," exclaimed Frances, sinking on her knees, and hiding her face, "and--and I thought you loved me, too, until _she_ came and took your love away; and then I hated her--yes, words cannot tell how much I hated her. What had I in life worth living for when your love was gone? and I thought if I could only take her away from you, your heart would come back to me again. If you have suffered, what have not I? and she never could have loved you to have married another. Oh! forgive me, Charles, forgive me! and don't--don't hate me."

"Forgive you!" he replied. "No; years hence, when we meet again, I may, but not now."

"Years hence? Are you going away, then? Oh! you cannot be so cruel!"

"In another month I shall leave England, perhaps for ever,--a broken-hearted wretch, with an aimless, hopeless existence. All this you have driven me to, and yet you ask me to forgive you. For her sake--hers, of whom I dare not trust myself to speak--I will not, cannot forgive you!"

The bitterness of his grief was over; the first burst was past; and he spoke calmer now, although his every word, the tone even of his voice, sank like ice into Frances' soul, convincing her how hopelessly she loved.

"Oh! say not so, Charles," she cried, "or you will crush me utterly.

See,--see how I must love you to kneel here, and to humble my pride so entirely as to tell you I--I love you."

"Love! Does love break the heart of the loved one as you have broken mine? Call you such a deadly feeling as this, love? Say, rather, that you hate me."

"No, no; never! Whatever you do, whatever you say, I shall love you still,--love you for ever!"

"Give me your hate," he replied, "I would rather have that."

But Frances only answered by sobs and wringing her hands.

"If," he continued, "you have wrecked my happiness and hers through love of me, I wish to G.o.d you had hated me!"

"I could not," sobbed Frances, utterly overcome. "You--you won my love two years ago. Yes! you loved me then."

"Never!" he cried vehemently, almost savagely. "Never! I swear it!"

"Cruel!" murmured Frances.