Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/118

110, you are your own man again; go and marry your new love."

"It will not be a marriage of to-day or to-morrow," answered Bothwell gravely. "My new love and I will have to wait for better times. First, I am a pauper; and, secondly, there is a taint upon my name, inasmuch as the good people of Bodmin and the neighbourhood have taken it into their wise heads that I am a murderer, because I refused to answer some very impertinent questions at the inquest. Valeria, will you forgive me—will you believe—"

"That you were heartily tired of me ages ago, before you left India," she said, interrupting him with a feverish rapidity. She had sunk into her low chair again, and was seated with her hands clasped upon the basket-work, bedizened with trappings of Oriental embroidery, like an Arab's horse—her eyes gazing over the wide panorama of land and sea, the dockyards, the river, the lighthouse yonder, and the long line of surf dashing against the breakwater.

"Yes, I know that you were weary of me long before that bitter good-bye," she went on, breathless with passion, her sentences broken into short gasps. "I think I knew even then that you were false, though I pretended to myself that you were true. I don't believe you ever loved me. You just let me love you, that was all. If you had really cared for me—as other men have cared for other women—you would not have been so obedient. You would have flung prudence to the winds—you would have made scenes—you would have wanted to run away with me. No, you never loved me."

It would have been vain now for Bothwell to protest the reality of the old worn-out passion. It had never been of the strongest stuff that love is made of, and it had long been growing threadbare. He had received his release, and that was the boon he had come here to ask. But he could not leave the woman he had once loved without one word of peace.

"Valeria," he said gently, tenderly even, "I shall stay here till you forgive me."

"Would you stay until you have forced me to tell a lie? There can be no blacker lie than any word of mine that offered forgiveness to you. You have deceived me cruelly. You were my strong rock, and I leant upon you for comfort. O Bothwell, what is she like, this other woman for whom you forsake me? Is she so much more beautiful—so much younger—fresher than I?"

"She is good, and pure, and true, and has been brave and loyal when the world spoke evil of me! That is all I can tell you about her."

"But she is handsome, I suppose? You are not going to marry a plain woman, out of gratitude!"