"I believed your letter," I replied; "and I shared your opinion of her as
long as she was in the same house with me. Her presence fed my anger and
my horror of her in some way that I can't account for. Now she has left
me--now I have had time to think--there is something in her absence that
pleads for her, and tortures me with doubts if I have done right. I can't
explain it--I don't understand it. I only know that so it is."
He still looked at me more and more attentively. "Your good opinion of
her must have been very firmly rooted to assert itself in this obstinate
manner," he said. "What can she have done to deserve it?"
If I had looked back through all my old recollections of her, and had
recalled them one by one, it would only have ended in making me cry. And
yet, I felt that I ought to stand up for her as long as I could. I
managed to meet the difficulty in this way.
"I will tell you what she did," I said, "after I received your letter.
Fortunately for me, she was not very well that morning; and she
breakfasted in bed. I had plenty of time to compose myself, and to
caution Zillah (who read your letter to me), before we met for the first
time that day. On the previous day, I had felt hurt and offended with her
for the manner in which she accounted for your absence from Browndown. I
thought she was not treating me with the same confidence which I should
have placed in her, if our positions had been reversed. When I next saw
her, having your warning in my mind, I made my excuses, and said what I
thought she would expect me to say, under the circumstances. In my
excitement and my wretchedness, I daresay I over-acted my part. At any
rate, I roused the suspicion in her that something was wrong. She not
only asked me if anything had happened, she went the length of saying, in
so many words, that she thought she saw a change in me. I stopped it
there, by declaring that I did not understand her. She must have seen
that I was not telling the truth: she must have known as well as I knew
that I was concealing something from her. For all that, not one word more
escaped her lips. A proud delicacy--I saw it as plainly in her face, as I
now see you--a proud delicacy silenced her; she looked wounded and hurt.
I have been thinking of that look, since I have been here. I have asked
myself (what did not occur to me at the time) if a false woman, who knew
herself to be guilty, would have behaved in that way? Surely a false
woman would have set her wits against mine, and have tried to lead me
into betraying to her what discoveries I had really made? Oscar! that
delicate silence, that wounded look, _will_ plead for her when I think of
her in her absence! I can _not_ feel as satisfied as I once did, that she
is the abominable creature you declare her to be. I know you are
incapable of deceiving me--I know you believe what you say. But is it not
possible that appearances have misled you? Can you really be sure that
you have not made some dreadful mistake?"
Without answering me, he suddenly stopped at a seat under the stone
parapet of the pier, and signed to me to sit down by him. I obeyed.
Instead of looking at me, he kept his head turned away; looking out over
the sea. I could not make him out. He perplexed--he almost alarmed me.
"Have I offended you?" I asked.
He turned towards me again, as abruptly as he had turned away. His eyes
wandered; his face was pale.
"You are a good generous creature," he said, in a confused hasty way.
"Let us talk of something else."
"No!" I answered. "I am too deeply interested in knowing the truth to
talk of anything else."
His color changed again at that. His face flushed; he gave a heavy sigh
as one does sometimes, when one is making a great effort.
"You _will_ have it?" he said.
"I _will_ have it?"
He rose again. The nearer he was to telling me all that he had kept
concealed from me thus far, the harder it seemed to be to him to say the
first words.
"Do you mind walking on again?" he asked.
I silently rose on my side, and put my arm in his. We walked on slowly
towards the end of the pier. Arrived there, he stood still, and spoke
those hard first words--looking out over the broad blue waters: not
looking at me.
"I won't ask you to take anything for granted, on my assertion only," he
began. "The woman's own words, the woman's own actions, shall prove her
guilty."