say what sounds harsh, you may take it as the result of experience, and not as any suggestion against anybody in particular. Letters not received secretly! You were yourself a gay man once, and might remember that such things are.”
“I don’t like your tone and manner, Berry, but I have promised to hear you to the end,” said Arthur, haughtily. His tone and manner served only to increase the old man’s pertinacity.
“Tu l’as voulu,” he said. “Why, Lygon, cannot a correspondent be told so to post letters that they may be delivered at a time when the husband will be out? Or, as he never opens a letter of his wife’s, can she not toss across to him, as the contents of an envelope, a harmless letter that was never in it at all? Or cannot the letter be harmless enough, while the postscript is on a separate paper, and not producible—and not produced? Or cannot the letter be sent to or through a convenient lady-friend; or, better still, one who is unconscious that she is aiding in a trick?”
“Mr. Berry,” said Arthur, in a rage, “you may spare yourself the trouble of proving to me that you have read a great many French plays, but when you are speaking of”
“Of Mrs. Urquhart, who, living in Paris, must have seen a great many French plays,” said Mr. Berry; “why, then, the thing is not quite so ridiculous, Lygon.”
“But you are talking as if my wife could lend herself to such chambermaid’s devices.”
“She may have done so, and yet been irreproachable,” replied Berry.
“Irreproachable!” repeated Arthur, scornfully.
“Yes, perfectly so. Such things may have been forced upon her by another, and she, placed in the position of having to choose between evils, may have chosen the lesser.”
“The lesser being—what I will not describe—what is the greater?” replied Lygon, struggling with passion.
“Yes, tell me the lesser,” returned Berry, fixing his eye keenly on Lygon.
“What!” said Arthur, angrily. “Are you asking me to imagine a wife, who has an honourable man’s love and trust, sending him away in the morning with an affectionate kiss and glance, bidding him return as early as he can, and calling the children to say good-bye; and then, as the door closes behind him, looking after him with a smile of the contempt a deceiver feels for the deceived, and turning complacently to her clandestine letters? Tell me your greater wrong, for that is beyond my imagination.”
“It is you who are at the French picture now,” said Berry, “and devilishly you have blackened it.”
Mrs. Berry here felt it her duty to protest, by gesture, against her husband’s adverb.
“Yes,” said the old man, in a kinder tone than he had hitherto used, “you may be doing a cruel injustice. It may be that the very woman whom you accuse of smiling at her dupe has, at the moment you describe, her eyes flooded with tears at the thought of her withheld confidence, that she would give the world not to have been induced to become a party to deceit, and that if she could but have placed those letters in her husband’s hands, and leaned on his bosom as he read them, her heart, which may be as true as gold, would have been lightened of a bitter load. But you men of the world, as you call yourselves, have experiences which always help you to the worst construction of a woman’s act.”
Arthur Lygon laid a rather strong grasp on his friend’s wrist.
“Mr. Berry,” he said, in a suppressed voice, “you are doing one of two things. You are either talking vaguely, in the idea of getting through our interview without telling me what I seek to know, or you are preparing me for a revelation which, as your wife has said, is terrible indeed. I would not willingly insult you by believing that you are trying to waste time.”
“That is well, at all events,” said Mr. Berry, coldly. “You have given me your overdrawn and malicious view of what may be a perfectly innocent woman’s course, and I will only ask you, for your future peace of mind, to remember that I have pointed out to you how such a course ought to be regarded by a man who truly loves.”
“My wife has then conducted a secret correspondence,” said Mr. Lygon, sternly. “Leave to me the question how her conduct shall be dealt with.”
“I have not said that it is so, but that it may be so. Granting that it is”
And Mrs. Berry’s eyes were fixed intently upon Arthur’s, to watch how he would receive the rest.
“Granting that it is, can you, in the excess of the love you profess for Mrs. Lygon, imagine no state of things that could justify such a course on her part?”
“You know that I cannot wring the truth from you,” said Lygon, bitterly, “and therefore you let it ooze out drop by drop. You have already told me that which I wish to God I had not heard, but will you give me at once what explanation there may be, or am I to turn to Mrs. Berry?”
“I have said that I am silent,” said Mrs. Berry, “but had I been permitted to speak, I would have spared him this long-suffering.”
“I know your mercy,” said her husband, meaningly. “He is better in my hands. Arthur, it is true that there is a secret in the family of Mr. Vernon. But to reveal it to the world would simply be the cruellest act of wickedness. What has been done was done long ago, and bitterly and fully repented of. Circumstances have entirely changed, and the matter should be consigned to utter oblivion. That secret, however, is known to certain persons, and two of them are Mrs. Urquhart and Mrs. Lygon.”
“How long has Mrs. Lygon known it?”
“Always—that is to say, from the time when the circumstances arose.”
“Which was before her marriage?”
“Long before. And without having any knowledge whatever that those ladies may have corresponded in connection with it, I do not consider such a thing improbable.”
“And with this secret you couple my wife’s disappearance?” asked Arthur, in agitation.
“I cannot say that I see any other solution of the mystery.”
