Her lips opened, and almost inaudibly she breathed: "Your honour."
He winced and set his teeth hard.
"My honour!"
"Yes. You have pledged your word, you have made your bargain--the price
was paid, I suppose; you say so. Then in honour you belong to--_her_."
The colour flamed in his face and his eyes grew hot.
"You cast me off--you drive me back to her!" he said, scarcely knowing
what he said.
"Yes!" she responded, faintly. "You belong to her--to her only. Not to
me, ah, not to me! No, no, do not come near me, do not touch me! I had
forgotten--I was mad!--but I have remembered, I am sane now."
Driven almost beyond himself by the sudden revulsion from joy and hope
to doubt and despair, racked by the swift stemming of his passion,
Stafford's unreasoning anger rose against her: it is always so with the
man.
"My God! You send me away--to her! You--you do it coolly, easily
enough! Perhaps you have some other reason--someone has stepped into my
place--"
It was a cruel thing to say, even in his madness. For a moment she
cowered under it, then she raised her white face and looked straight
into his eyes.
"And if there has, can you blame me? You cast me aside--you sacrificed
me to your father's honour. You had done with me," her voice vibrated
with the bitterness which had been her portion for so many dreary
months. "Was the world, my life, to cease from that time forth? For you
there was--someone else, wealth, rank--for me was there to be nothing,
no consolation, no part or lot in life! Yes, there _is_ one--one who is
both good and noble, and--"
She broke down and covering her face with her hands turned away.
Stafford stood as if turned to stone; as if he had lost the sense of
sight and hearing. Silence reigned between them; the dogs who had been
sitting watching them, rose and shivering, whined complainingly, as if
they were asking what was amiss.
It was the woman--as always--who first relented and was moved to pity.
She moved to the motionless figure and touched him on the arm.
"Forgive me! I--I did not mean to wound you; but--but you drove me too
hard! But--but it is true. We cannot undo the past. It is _there_, as
solid, as unmovable, as that mountain: _and it is between us_, a wall,
a barrier of stone. Nothing can remove it. You--you will remember your
honour, Stafford?" Her voice quavered for a moment but she steadied it.
"You--you will not lose that, though all else be lost? You will go to
her?"