"Then why should he not know? Why should he not have known? Cecilia, you will tell him to-night before he goes to his rest?"

"No,--no. Not to-night. It is impossible. I must wait till that woman has gone."

"Miss Altifiorla knows it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"She knows, too, that he does not know it?" This question Cecilia answered only by some sign. "I fancied that it might be so. I thought that there was something between you which had been kept from him.

Why, why have you been,--shall I say so foolish?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes; foolish;--oh, yes! But it has been only that. There is nothing, nothing that is not known to all the world. The marvel is that he should not have known it. It was in all the newspapers. But he never thinks of trifles such as that."

"But why did you keep it from him?"

"Shall I tell you? You know the story of his own engagement."

"To Miss Tremenhere? Oh, yes, I know the story."

"And how badly she behaved to him, receiving the attention of another man, absolutely while she was engaged to him."

"She was very pretty;--but a flighty, inconstant little girl. I felt that George had had a great escape."

"But such was the story. Well;--he told it me. He told it before he had thought of me. We were together and had become intimate; and out of the full heart the mouth speaks."

"I can understand that he should have told it you."

"He did not think of loving me then. Well;--he told me his story, but I kept mine to myself."

"That was natural,--then."

"But, when he came to me with the other story and asked me to love him, was I to give him back his own tale and tell him the same thing of myself? I too have had a lover, and I have--jilted him, if you please to call it so. Was I to tell him that?"

"It would hardly have been true, I think."

"It would have been true,--true to the letter," said Cecilia, determined that Sir Francis Geraldine's lie should not prevail at this moment. "I had done to Sir Francis just what the girl had done to your brother. I was guided by other motives and had, I think, behaved properly. Was I to tell it to him then?"

"Why not?"

"His own story, back again? I could not do it, and then, after that, from time to time the occasions have gone by. Words have been said by him which have made it impossible. Twenty times I have determined to do it, and twenty times the opportunity has been lost. I was obliged to tell this woman not to mention it in his presence."

"He must know it."

"I wish he did."

"He is a man who will not bear to be kept in the dark on such a question."

"I know it. I have read his character and I know it."

"You cannot know him as I do," said Lady Grant. "Though you are his wife you have not been so long enough to know him; how true he is, how affectionate, how honest; but yet how jealous! Were I to say that he is unforgiving I should belie him. Without many thoughts he could forgive the man who had robbed him of his fortune, or his health.

But it is hard for him to forgive that which he considers to be an offence against his self-love."

"I know it all."

"The longer he is kept in the dark the deeper will be the wound. Of such a man it is impossible to say what he suspects. He will not think that you have loved him the less or that you are less true to him; but there will be something that will rankle, and which he will not endeavour to define. He is the n.o.blest man on earth, and the most generous--till he be offended. But then he is the most bitter."

"You describe his character just as I have read it."

"If it be so you must be careful that he learn this from yourself, and not from others. If it come from you he will be angry, that it has come so late. But his anger will pa.s.s by and he will forgive you.

But if he hears it from the world at large, if it be told of you, and not by you, then I can understand, that his wrath should be very great."

"Why has he not heard it already?" asked Mrs. Western after a pause.

"Why has he not been like all the world who have read it in the newspapers? It was talked of so much, that it was hardly necessary that I should tell it myself."

"You yourself have said that he does not think of trifles. Paragraphs about the loves and marriages of other people he would never read.

You may be sure at any rate of this,--that your engagement with Sir Francis Geraldine he has never read."

"I have sometimes hoped," said Mrs. Western, "that he knew it all."

Lady Grant shook her head. "I have sometimes thought that he knew it all, and regarded it as a matter on which nothing need be said between us. Should I have been angry with him had he not told me of Miss Tremenhere?"

"Do you measure the one thing by the other," said Lady Grant; "a man's desires by a woman's, a man's sense of honour by what a woman is supposed to feel? Though a man keep such secrets deep in his bosom through long years of married life, the woman is not supposed to be injured. She may know, or may not know, and may hear the tale at any period of her married life, and no harm will follow. But a man expects to see every thought in the breast of the woman to whose love be trusts, as though it were all written there for him in the clear light, but written in letters which no one else shall read."

"I have nothing that he may not read," said Mrs. Western.

"But there is something that he has not read, something that he has not been invited to read. Let it not remain so. Tell it to him all even though you may have to support his anger, and for a time to pine in the shadow of his displeasure."

Mrs. Western as she went away to her own room felt some relief at any rate in the conviction that with Lady Grant her secret would be safe.

Strong as was the bond which bound her to her brother, there would be on her tongue no itching desire to tell the secret simply because it was there to be told. She had not threatened, or spoken of her duty, or boasted of her friendship, but had simply given her advice in the strongest language which it was within her power to use. On the next morning she took her leave, and started on her journey without showing even by a glance that she was possessed of any secret.

"Does she know?" asked Miss Altifiorla as soon as the two were in the drawing-room together, using a kind of whisper which had now become habitual to her.

It may almost be said that Mrs. Western had come to hate her friend.

She looked forward to the time of her going as a liberation from misery. Miss Altifiorla's intrusion at Durton Lodge was altogether unpalatable to her. She certainly no longer loved her friend, and knew well that her friend knew that it was so. But still she could not risk the open enmity of one who knew her secret. And she was bound to answer the question that was asked her. "Yes, she does know it."

"And what does she say?"

"It matters not what she says. My request to you is that you should not speak of it."

"But to yourself!"

"No, not to myself or to any other person here." Then she was silent; and Miss Altifiorla, pursing up her lips, bethought herself whether the demands made upon her friendship were not too heavy. But there still remained five days of the visit.

CHAPTER IX.

MISS ALTIFIORLA'S DEPARTURE.