Two on a Tower

'Viviette,' he said, 'I am sorry for my hasty words to you when I last

left this house. I readily withdraw them. My suspicions took a wrong

direction. I think now that I know the truth. You have been even madder

than I supposed!' 'In what way?' she asked distantly.

'I lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favoured

lover.' 'You thought wrong: he is not.' 'He is not--I believe you--for he is more. I now am persuaded that he is

your lawful husband. Can you deny it!' 'I can.' 'On your sacred word!' 'On my sacred word he is not that either.' 'Thank heaven for that assurance!' said Louis, exhaling a breath of

relief. 'I was not so positive as I pretended to be--but I wanted to

know the truth of this mystery. Since you are not fettered to him in

that way I care nothing.' Louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving the

room. Those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance,

and settled her doom.

She would let Swithin go. All the voices in her world seemed to clamour

for that consummation. The morning's mortification, the afternoon's

benevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had joined to carry

the point.

Accordingly she sat down, and wrote to Swithin a summary of the thoughts

above detailed.

'We shall separate,' she concluded. 'You to obey your uncle's orders and

explore the southern skies; I to wait as one who can implicitly trust

you. Do not see me again till the years have expired. You will find me

still the same. I am your wife through all time; the letter of the law

is not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the letter

secures your fortune.' Nothing can express what it cost Lady Constantine to marshal her

arguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of the

general expediency. It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the only

ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent;

that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. Tenderly she had

loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and her

after-conduct proved.

Women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. Eve

probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the Fall.

On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine had blushed

hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriage

without a moment's delay. Heaven and earth were to be moved at once to

effect it. Day after day had passed; her union had remained unsecured,

and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her;

till it became of little account beside her bold resolve for the young

man's sake.