He has always behaved well to your family, and has not deserved such language.”
“You know well that I did not allude to him.”
“But I know well that it is his counsel, and not that of the unfortunate gentleman we have mentioned, that brought you here. I know that Mr. Berry went to London, and saw your sister, that lady whom I have just turned out of my room, and I have some guess at what he said to that lady, which makes it strange that she should have thought of honouring me with a visit. Mr. Berry has a remarkable attachment for your husband, Mrs. Lygon, and will not shrink at any sacrifice to show it. He has not even hesitated to bring strangers into his wife’s room, on the most agitating business, when he has been made aware that her life may be an affair of hours. He is a truly kind friend, Mrs. Lygon, and one who deserves all gratitude from those he serves.”
“I understand but half of what you say.”
“Dare you deny that Mr. Berry has visited your sister, for the purpose of helping you to deceive your husband?”
Laura’s eye fell on the book, and in that look Mrs. Berry, watchful, read an instinct to secure it and depart. The old woman laid firm clutch upon the volume.
“The book is mine, until I choose to part with it, Mrs. Lygon,” she said, in an under voice of taunt. “I am ill, certainly, but I do not think that you can take it from me.”
“What is the object of your insults, Mrs. Berry? I have never done you harm.”
“Have you not?” replied Mrs. Berry, slowly. “Ah! but you shall never have the triumph of knowing how you have injured me, or of thinking that after all a bitter account has been but balanced.”
She looked very evilly at Laura, and kept her clutch upon the book.
“I am as ignorant of having injured you, as I was that you have injured me,” said Mrs. Lygon.
“You would leave me now,” said Mrs. Berry, “only I have this hostage for your remaining. Well, perhaps I may pay you for your patience, but I will do it in my own way. You will not say that you are sorry for having written these sad letters—they are clever, too, in their way, but sad when we think of them as from the pen of an unmarried lady.”
“If you couple that wickedness with my name again, I will ring for my sister and Mr. Berry—”
“Tear the book from the dying woman’s hands, and leave the house in an access of virtuous indignation! Do. But what will you gain by that—how much nearer will you draw to the heart of Arthur Lygon? Do not be a fool, child. I hold your destiny in my hands. So, you repudiate these letters?”
“Dare you ask me?”
“Indeed I dare, with my hands upon your own writing. Is it not so, Mrs. Arthur Lygon?” said Mrs. Berry, plunging her hands into separate parts of the volume.
“You are aware of the wicked fraud. You know—you know, and you dare not deny that it is so—that you have there six letters, written in all innocence by a young girl, and containing nothing—folly, perhaps, but no wrong—that these letters have been bound up with twenty others, so shameful that no woman’s hand could ever have been in them.”
“Indeed?” said Mrs. Berry, with a smile.
“You know this.”
“You are strangely positive. But you may be speaking the truth. Still, if you are, there are at least six letters here which speak of love.”
“Yes, it is true, a girl’s first love, when she hardly knows the meaning of the word, and when she writes from her fancy, and not her heart—there are those letters.”
“And they are yours?”
“They are mine.”
“So, we come to something like confession at last. I do not think that these admitted letters are addressed to Mr. Arthur Lygon—that is not the name with which so many endearing epithets are coupled.”
“You know to whom they were written, and that he has long been dead.”
“And our heart sleeps in his tomb?”
“The girl’s fancy had been forgotten, almost the whole childlike folly, long before he died, years before I met my husband.”
“So completely forgotten, that the frank and open-hearted Laura never told her husband that he was not so fortunate as to be the first possessor of her heart. Do I not know your history well?”
“You have the truth, I know not how you learned it.”
“Why was this confidence withheld from Arthur Lygon? Had it been given, these letters could never have been an engine for separating you, and his generous nature would have appreciated your frankness.”
“It was not given, unhappily,” said Mrs. Lygon, “and it is useless to dwell upon that error.”
“Why was it not given, I ask again?”
“And I cannot answer.”
“Then I will answer for you. It was because the pure and candid Laura Vernon had in the meantime, and after her first love had died out, found consolation in a second.”
“What?”
“In a second love, which might have been more prosperous, only its object had been already appropriated. Laura Vernon’s next passion was for the lover of her sister Bertha.”
“It is false!” said Mrs. Lygon.
“It must be true,” said Mrs. Berry, calmly. “And her influence over him was very great—I will not say how great. Indeed, it was hard for some people to decide whether it was Laura or Bertha who had the firmest hold upon Mr. Hardwick’s heart.”
Laura sprang up as if she had been assailed by some venomous animal.
“A wicked, a cruel slander. And it could have come but from one person; there cannot be two persons living who are base enough to have forged such a lie. It comes from him whom I have hated from the first hour that we met, whom I have never ceased to hate, and who has haunted my life like a fiend. I thought that vengeance had come upon him at last, but he has escaped it,
