"I should now be sorry to think otherwise," I said huskily. I
thought of that poisonous draught. I thought with many misgivings,
and trembled where I sat.
"You surprise me to hear you speak so. Surely, Clifford, you love
your wife!"
"Love her!" I exclaimed; I could say no more. My sobs choked my
utterance.
"Nay, do not give up," he said tenderly. "Be a man. All will go well
yet. The facts are anything but conclusive. These papers have a
realness about them, which have their weight against any suspicions,
however strong. Remember, these are the declarations of a dying man!
Surely, all minor considerations of policy would give way at such
a moment to the all-important necessity of speaking the truth.
Besides, there is one consideration alone, to which we have made no
reference, which yet seems to me full of weight and value. Edgerton
could scarcely have been successful in his designs upon your wife.
He was in fact dying of the disappointment of his passions. They
could not have been gratified. Success takes an exulting aspect.
He was always miserable and wo-begone--always desponding, sad,
unhappy, from the first moment when this passion began, to the
last."
"Guilt, guilt, nothing but guilt!"
"No, Clifford, no!--The guilt that works so terribly upon conscience
as to produce such effects upon the frame, inevitably leads to
repentance. Now, we find that Edgerton pursued his object until he
was detected."
I shook my head.
"Do not steel yourself against probabilities, my dear fellow," said
Kingsley.
"Proofs against probabilities always!"
"No! none of these are proofs except the papers you have in your
hands, and the imperfect events which you witnessed. I am so much
an admirer of your wife myself, that I am ready to believe this
statement against the rest; and to believe that, however strange
may have been her conduct in some respects, it will yet be explained
in a manner which shall acquit her of misconduct. Believe me,
Clifford, think with me--"
"No! no! I can not--dare not! She is a--"
"Do not! Do not! No harsh words, even were it so! She has been
your wife. She should still be sacred in your eyes, as one who has
slept upon your bosom."
"A traitress all the while, dreaming of the embraces of another."
"Clifford, what can this mean? You are singularly inveterate."
"Should I not be so? Am I not lost--abandoned--wrecked on the high
seas of my hope--my fortunes scattered to the winds--my wealth, the
jewel which I prized beyond all beside, which was worth the whole,
gone down, swallowed up, and the black abyss closed over it for
ever?"
"We are not sure of this"
"I am!"
"No! no!"
"I am! Though she be innocent, who shall rid me of the doubt, the
fear, the ineradicable suspicion! THAT blackens all my sunlight;
THAT poisons all my peace. I can never know delight. Nay, though
you proved her innocent, it is now too late. Kingsley, by this time
I have no wife!"