me my happiness would be restored to me. This cannot be.”
“Cannot be?”
“I will not now discuss a painful subject. I have put your husband in full possession of my views, and he will explain them to you.”
“Explain!—I want only one word. Laura is in the house, and that wicked evidence against her is scattered to the winds—why is she not in your arms?”
“Be calmer, dear Beatrice,” said Charles Hawkesley. “There is, unhappily, a feeling which is not to be removed by your appeal—it has not been removed by graver arguments. Arthur must take his own course.”
“He shall hear his wife, however!” said Beatrice, agitated, and going to the door.
“Stay, Beatrice,” said her husband.
“You, too, tell me to stay. What is this?”
“Do you think I would stop you for a second, if it were not necessary? Arthur, will you tell my wife why it is necessary?”
“He has offended you, I see,” said Beatrice, quickly.
“He has grieved me. But that is not worth a word. Let him tell you—or shall I say it for him?—that no reconciliation with Laura is possible.”
“Arthur—are you mad?”
“Not so mad, Beatrice,” said Arthur Lygon, in cold, measured speech, “as to risk my life’s happiness twice.”
“Risk! You are speaking of my sister.”
“I am speaking of my wife, even a better guarantee, Beatrice, that I should not speak lightly.”
“You will break her heart!” exclaimed Beatrice, passionately.
“It will not be so.”
“Oh, Arthur! it must be my fault. In my hurry and eagerness to tell you the good news, I have told it badly, and you do not quite understand me. Dear Arthur! Mrs. Berry, the wife of your friend, is dying, and confesses to having forged the letters on which Laura was condemned. You have understood me now,” she sobbed, “fly up to her, dear soul, and assure her that she is to be happy again. What is it, Charles?” she added, piteously.
“I hope that Laura will long be happy,” said Lygon; “but her happiness will be separated from mine.”
“That it can never be.”
“It could be once, and it had been well for us all if—if we had not been parties to a fearful mistake. But we will not make it a second time.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Arthur, tell me what you mean! Do you not believe this story which I have told you, this confession of a dying woman? If you could have heard the solemn way in which it was uttered—”
“I know it to be true.”
“Bless you for saying that! Then what more is there between you and Laura? You have freed her from that wicked charge—what more?”
“That wicked charge! Beatrice, had that been all, how mad must Laura’s conduct have seemed? They were bungling forgers, those wretches. Had their letters been all that could be brought against Laura, she would have laughed them to scorn. The villain who wrote them, and his accomplice, knew little of their business. Until I had seen copies of the letters, I hardly knew what to believe, but half a dozen pages sufficed for me. Copies have been shown me, and my only marvel is that poor Urquhart could have been deluded into the belief that such letters could have come from the pen of a woman whom I had called wife.”
“She could not have written them?” said Beatrice, with tears running down her glowing cheeks.
“She could not. No English matron, whose taste as well as her heart had not been debauched by vice, could have written them—they are worthy the hands of a low profligate like Adair, and a half-mad and wholly bad woman like Mrs. Berry. Had those been the only evidences, Laura would have trampled the accusation under her feet, and have left her vengeance to me. I tell you, Beatrice, one glance at those letters was enough.”
“Then what remains?”
“The other letters, which Laura is afraid to disavow. The letters that show she has loved and been loved, and by a man whom she has not wedded. It was for those letters that Laura went to France, and the story which they reveal is the story that parts us for ever.”
“My God, Arthur Lygon! The mother of your children! Because when she was a girl, scarcely more than a child, she fancied herself in love with some boy who has long been dead, but who has much longer been forgotten by her.”
“I know not whether the object of her love be dead, or be alive, nor is it of importance. She was a woman when she wrote those letters, and she loved the man to whom they were written. Had I known it, she had never been my wife. As it is, she is my wife no longer. Let those words suffice.”
“Charles!” gasped Mrs. Hawkesley, “are you a party to this madness, this cruelty? No, I am sure you are not.”
“I am not.”
“He is not—I will not pause over your words, Beatrice—let me say that your husband is unable to understand my feelings, and has laboured with a zeal which ought to do more than satisfy you, that it is my duty to accept such love as Mrs. Lygon can offer me, and for the sake of the children to forget the deceit of the mother.”
“And was it so, Charles, that you urged the case of Laura?”
“Again I ask Arthur to reply.”
“I see,” said Lygon. “I have expressed my own feelings, not his. He is pleased almost to ridicule my feelings, and to condemn me for what he cannot understand. At the risk of offending you, Beatrice, I clear him from the blame you would give him.”
“And God bless you, Charles,” said his wife. “To you Arthur, what can I say, if you have shut your heart to such pleading as that which speaks for the mother of your children? This is indeed a new affliction, and I was presumptuous
