'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.