"After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted something I had said. I have to make a confession--I must make it!" she whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had led this woman of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. "I said to you I could give him up without pain or deprivation--that he had only been my pastime. That was untrue--it was said to deceive you. I could not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I cannot give him up--even if I would--of myself alone."
"Why? Because you love him, you mean."
Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement.
"I knew I was right!" said Grace, exaltedly. "But that should not deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone. "Oh, do struggle against it, and you will conquer!"
"You are so simple, so simple!" cried Felice. "You think, because you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I CANNOT give him up until he chooses to give up me."
"But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the cut must come from you."
"Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like this and finding how guileless you are." She thereupon whispered a few words in the girl's ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing.
Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to her feet.
"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation transcending her utmost suspicion. "Can it be--can it be!"
She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond's sobs came to her ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know which way to go. After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and turned to the motionless woman at her feet.
"Are you rested?" she asked, in what seemed something like her own voice grown ten years older.
Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
"You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest depths of her soul. "Oh fool, fool I!"
"No," said Grace, shortly. "I mean no such thing. But let us be quick now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but going straight on."
They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery's van. Grace recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her.
"How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold civility. "We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock.
The hazel copse is quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road."
They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice.
"You are quite near home."
Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the grave," she said. "I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret--or do you mean war?"
"A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully. "How can you expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!"
"And I'll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I'll try."
Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger now.
"Pray don't distress yourself," she said, with exquisitely fine scorn. "You may keep him--for me." Had she been wounded instead of mortified she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers's hold upon her heart was slight.
They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward.
Passing Marty's cottage she observed through the window that the girl was writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her correspondence could be. Directly afterwards she met people in search of her, and reached the house to find all in serious alarm. She soon explained that she had lost her way, and her general depression was attributed to exhaustion on that account.
Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been surprised.
The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, and she played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a fatal one for a lover.
