said Mrs. Berry, in answer to the words and to the look that accompanied them. “It is there that I am accustomed to turn for guidance.”
“Arthur,” said her husband, with the manner of a man who, having resolved on making a communication, desires that it shall be thoroughly understood, “follow me in what I may say, and answer what I may ask. Also, reserve all comment until I have done, and then ask what you will. Above all, believe that, as I have yielded, I make you no half confidence, and therefore do you attach no further or worse meaning to anything I say than the words ought to bear.”
“I will not.”
“It seems idle to ask you, Arthur, whether you recollect the circumstances attendant on your marriage, but I must recal them for a moment. Your acquaintance with the admirable and excellent young lady who is now your wife” (and Mr. Berry spoke the words of praise with marked emphasis) “was not a very long one. Your first meeting, I believe, took place at”
“At a party—a sort of pic-nic party, in those grounds yonder,” said Arthur, pointing towards the abbey. “It was on a fifteenth of May, my birthday; I have forgotten nothing. Go on.”
“And you married in the November following?”
“But I stayed for six weeks of that summer at the Barbel, and for nearly two months more in your house in the town, to which you were kind enough to make me remove.”
“That answer means that you had ample opportunity of becoming well acquainted with the character and disposition of Miss Vernon, and that yours was no hasty marriage. I had no such imputation in my mind. You also became well acquainted with part of the family of your intended wife.”
“With her father, and with her sister Beatrice, who had married Mr. Hawkesley, and with Charles Hawkesley himself, who, you know, was the means of my knowing the family.”
“But there was another person whom you did not meet until after your marriage?”
“You mean her sister Bertha.”
“Who had married two years before you came to Lipthwaite.”
“And was then living in Paris with her husband, Mr. Urquhart.”
“But you soon after became acquainted with tile Urquharts.”
“We called on them in the Avenue de Versailles, when I took Laura for her first visit to Paris, after Clara was born.”
“Did you become intimate?”
“Certainly not. I was not pleased with Mrs. Urquhart,—that is to say, she had become too much of a Frenchwoman of the type I hate, but this would not have prevented my behaving with cordiality towards Laura’s sister, if Laura had desired it, and circumstances had not come in the way. But something—yes, it was a death in his family postponed the dinner to which we were, of course, invited, and our stay being short, another call was all that took place in the way of intercourse. Mr. Urquhart had been summoned to Prussia on some engineering business, and I did not then see him again. When we were next in Paris, the house was shut up, Bertha and her husband having gone into the country.”
“Have you often met them since?”
“Once at the railway hotel, when they were on their way to Scotland, and we were together for a very short time—Laura was ill, and could not accompany me. And I once met Urquhart afterwards, at a scientific association, when he told me that his wife was at Boulogne. I believe those are the only occasions on which we have met, so you see there is no intimacy at all.”
“Do the sisters correspond, to your knowledge?”
“Why do you say ‘to my knowledge?’”
“Do not be annoyed at my putting any questions in my own way.”
“I need hardly tell you that I should never think of asking my wife any question about her correspondence, but I don’t suppose she receives letters which she does not mention to me, if they are worth mentioning at all. Do you imply that she would have letters from Bertha and conceal them from me?”
“You know how I love and honour your wife, Arthur, and yet I am bound to say that I think it not impossible that she may do so—or may have done so.”
“In that case she would act—though, I own, not as I might wish, for I think implicit confidence the most sensible thing between married people—she would act, I am certain, on a reason that would be perfectly satisfactory. Sisters who have been intimate from childhood may say a hundred things to one another which have no meaning for the eye of a third person, and assuredly I should never ask to see one of their letters that was not voluntarily shown to me.”
“But if the fact of Mrs. Lygon’s having received such letters were studiously withheld from you?” persisted Mr. Berry.
Arthur Lygon’s face darkened with displeasure.
“You are now making a charge of insincerity—nay, of deceit,” said he, “against Laura, who is perfectly incapable of either.”
“I begged you, and you promised, to forbear from remarks.”
“Well, go on.”
“Suppose, for present purposes, that such had been the case,” said Mr. Berry.
“Why,” said Lygon, impatiently, “even if I were to suppose such a thing, I don’t know how it could well be possible. Our letters arrive before I leave in the morning; they are all laid on the breakfast-table, and I am always down, and reading my paper, before Laura is dressed. I should see anything with a foreign postmark, but I am ashamed to discuss anything that implies deceit in her.”
“You are not asked to discuss anything,” returned Mr. Berry, coldly, “but to answer questions drawn upon you by yourself. As for a husband’s knowing what letters his wife receives, if she desire to conceal them, the idea is childish.”
“Not when the wife is like mine.”
“I am an old lawyer, and have had forty years’ experience of men and women, and therefore, if I