betrayal, a second awakening from my dream of happiness.
“Surely, if you had not been the most cruel of women, you would have been touched by the knowledge that I had already suffered so bitterly from a woman’s treachery, and you would have had mercy upon me. But you had no mercy. It suited you to come back to this neighbourhood, to be near your former lover, Launcelot Darrell.”
The letter dropped from Eleanor’s hands as she read these words.
“My former lover!” she cried; “my lover, Launcelot Darrell! Can my husband think that? Can he think that I ever loved Launcelot Darrell?”
She picked up the letter, and seated herself at her husband’s writing-table. Then she deliberately re-perused the first page of the lawyer’s epistle.
“How could he write such a letter?” she exclaimed, indignantly. “How could he think such cruel things of me after I had told him the truth—after I had revealed the secret of my life?”
She went on with the letter:
“From the hour of our return to Tolldale, Eleanor,” wrote Gilbert Monckton, “I knew the truth—the hard and cruel truth—very difficult for a man to believe, when he has built up his life and mapped out a happy future under the influence of a delusion which leaves him desolate when it melts away. I knew the worst. I watched you as a man only watches the woman upon whose truth his every hope depends, and I saw that you still loved Launcelot Darrell. By a hundred evidences, small in themselves, but damning when massed together, you betrayed your secret. You had made a mercenary marriage, looking to worldly advantages to counterbalance your sacrifice of feeling; and you found too late that the sacrifice was too hard for you to bear.
“I watched you day by day, and hour by hour; and I saw that as the time for Laura’s marriage approached, you grew hourly more unhappy, more restless, more impatient and capricious in your manner towards Launcelot.
“On the night of Maurice de Crespigny’s death the storm burst. You met Launcelot Darrell in the Woodlands garden—perhaps by chance, perhaps by appointment. You tried to dissuade him against the marriage with Laura, as you had tried to dissuade Laura from marrying him; and failing in this, you gave way to a frenzy of jealousy, and accused your false lover of an impossible crime.
“Remember, Eleanor, I accuse you of no deadly sin; no deliberate treachery to me. The wrong you have done me lies in the fact that you married me, while your heart was still given to another. I give you credit for having tried to conquer that fatal attachment, and I attribute your false accusations against Launcelot Darrell to a mad impulse of jealousy, rather than the studied design of a base woman. I try to think well of you, Eleanor, for I have loved you most dearly; and the new life that I had made for myself owed all its brightness to my hope of winning your regard. But it is not to be so. I bow my head to the decree, and I release you from a bond that has no doubt grown odious to you.
“I beg you, therefore, to write me a final letter, demanding such terms of separation as you may think fit. Let the ground of our parting be incompatibility of temper. Everything shall be done to render your position honourable; and I trust to you to preserve the name of Gilbert Monckton’s wife without taint or blemish. Signora Piccirillo will no doubt act for you in this business, and consent to assume the position of your guardian and friend. I leave you in full possession of Tolldale Priory, and I go to Torquay with my ward, whence I shall depart for the Continent as soon as our separation has been adjusted, and my business arrangements made.
“My address for the next fortnight will be the post-office, Torquay.
This was the letter which the lawyer had written to his young wife. Its contents were like a thunderbolt in the shock which they caused to Eleanor’s senses. She sat for a long time reading it over and over again. For the first time since her marriage she put aside the thought of her revenge, and began to think seriously of something else.
It was too cruel. Unmixed indignation was the feeling which took possession of her mind. She had no comprehension of the despair which had filled Gilbert Monckton’s breast as he wrote that farewell letter. She did not know how the strong man had done battle with his suspicions, struggling with every new doubt, and conquering it as it arose, only to be conquered himself at last, by the irresistible force of circumstances, every one of which seemed a new evidence against his wife. Eleanor could not know this. She only knew that her husband had most bitterly wronged her, and she could feel nothing but indignation—yet.
She tore the letter into a hundred fragments. She wanted to annihilate its insulting accusations. How dared he think so vilely of her? Then a feeling of despair sank into her breast, like some actual burden, chill and heavy, that bowed her down to the earth, and for the time paralysed her energies.
Nothing but failure had met her upon every side. She had been too late in her attempt to see Maurice de Crespigny before his death. She had failed to prove Launcelot Darrell’s guilt; though the evidence of his crime had been in her hands, though she had been herself the witness of his wrong-doing. Everything had been against her. The chance which had thrown her across the pathway of the very man she wished to meet, had only given rise to delusive hopes, and had resulted in utter defeat.
And now she found herself suspected and deserted by her husband,—the man whom she had loved and respected with every better feeling of a generous nature that had been warped and stunted by the all-absorbing motive of her life. In her indignation against Gilbert Monckton, her hatred of Launcelot Darrell became even more bitter than before, for it was he who had caused all