Guilty Bonds

“That I am to blame, Frank, I admit,” she said, dashing the tears from her eyes, “but he is not my lover. I swear you are mistaken. Nothing was further from my thoughts.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that! I know enough of the world to distinguish the meaning of such clandestine meetings,” I replied, sickened at the manner she was endeavouring to clear herself.

“There is no love between us,” she exclaimed; “but,” – and she paused.

“Then why meet him in such a secret manner?” I demanded, adding with a sneer, “perhaps you will tell me next that it was not you I saw, but a twin sister.”

She still hesitated, with her eyes cast down as if in thought.

“You can give no answer,” I continued with warmth, “because you are guilty.”

“Guilty only of meeting him,” she said, drawing a deep breath: “but I assure you there is no love between us – nay, I swear it – only a secret tie.”

“I don’t wish you to perjure yourself,” I remarked coldly. “You ‘assure me’! What utter nonsense.”

“I tell you the truth.”

“You have told me so many falsehoods that a little truth is certainly refreshing!” I replied with sarcasm.

“I cannot force you to believe me,” she continued in a low voice, still steadying herself by the chair.

“Do you think me such a confounded idiot, then, as to believe you could have business with a strange man at that hour of the night?”

“Business, nevertheless, was the object of our meeting.”

“Bah! your excuses are positively intolerable. What was the nature of this business?”

“You must not know,” she replied, hesitatingly.

Her brows contracted, and her tiny hands clenched tightly upon the chair-back, as if summoning all her courage to be firm.

“Ah! the old story. More mystery. Look here! I’ve had enough of it!” I shouted in anger. “In fact, I’ve had too much of it already, and I demand an explanation, or you and I must part!”

A shudder ran through her slim frame as I spoke, and she lost her support and almost fell. With a sudden movement she pushed back the mass of dark curls from her forehead, her bright eyes gleamed with an earnest fire as they met mine, and she said, hysterically, “You are cruel – you do not know how I suffer, for your surmise is not correct in the smallest degree. You, my husband, I love, and no one else. And you accuse me. Mon Dieu!”

My self-control was very nearly exhausted. If she had been a man I might have struck her! As it was, I was powerless, and as I looked at her my eyes must have gleamed with fury.

“Last night proved the great extent of your love for me,” I exclaimed fiercely.

All that latent fire which exists in every woman’s nature, ready to burst into flame when her self-respect is wounded, was aglow in Vera as I uttered that retort.

“I cannot see that it did. I have done absolutely nothing of which I am ashamed,” was her answer.

She spoke with a cool, reckless candour that shocked me. My thoughts were soured by disappointment.

“What!” I cried, “have you no compunction?”

“I am sorry it was my ill-luck to be seen by you, and thus cause you unnecessary pain.”

“Oh, spare me your expressions of sorrow, pray,” I said, in a hard tone. “They are out of place.”

“I had thought to keep his presence a secret,” she continued in that dead-calm voice, which was like some one speaking in a dream.

“If he were not your lover, why should you do that? Your own words prove your guilt?”

“Because I had reasons,” she replied. “Reasons!” I repeated, my thoughts at once reverting to the piece of seal I had discovered. “Strange reasons they must be, surely. What is his name?”

“It is nobody you know. You have never heard of him.”

It was upon the tip of my tongue to denounce him as the perpetrator of the crime in Bedford Place, but with difficulty I restrained myself, and, impelled by the strangeness of her manner, demanded:

“Who is he? Answer me!”

“I am very sorry, Frank, but I cannot,” she replied, her face deathly pale, and her limbs trembling with agitation.

“Then you refuse to answer?” I cried, stung to the quick by her dogged persistency.

“Yes; I must.”

Her hands clasped, her teeth firmly set, her bloodless face tear-stained and haggard, and her hair disordered, she stood rigidly beside the chair that supported her, striving by an almost superhuman effort to suppress her emotion.

“Vera,” I shouted fiercely, “it seems I’ve been fooled. Curse that man who has brought misery and destruction to us both! By heaven if – ”

“He is not to blame: it is I,” she interrupted. “You shield him at the expense of yourself. I see. Now, hear me. All my questions you have evaded; to none will you give direct answers. Enough of mysteries which you have refused to reveal ever since knowing me; therefore, we can do naught else but part.”

“What – you will leave me because of this?” she moaned, with a wild, hysterical cry. “Why don’t you go a step further – why don’t you say at once you are tired of me?” she cried, with an outburst of passion. “Say that you wish me dead.”