don't think I should. However, there is no fear now. . . . Are you always to be doing me good, dear, and am I never to do you any?"
"You have done me good all my life," he says, heartily; "you have been the one flower to brighten my dull grey garden."
A bitter, bitter pain runs through my heart at his words; is it not hard for him, hard? There he is, free and young, loving me; here am I, free and young, living somebody else, who is not free to love me. Oh! why cannot I pluck that other love out of my heart, and putting my hand in his, make his imperfect, spoiled life a completed, happy one? And I cannot.
"Nell," he says, presently, "do you remember how I have always warned you against Mrs. Vasher—after she tried to make friends with you, I mean?"
"I remember."
"Well, she has been a worse enemy to you lately than she ever was before; and that is saying a good deal."
"How can she be that?" I ask, startled; "surely there is no other misfortune left for her to work me?"
"She has tried, Nell. If ever a woman put another in the way of temptation, Mrs. Vasher has tried to put you. Not an opportunity does she ever miss of bringing you and her husband together; over and over again I have watched her manoeuvres to have you alone, and smiled at the unconscious way in which you have foiled her—she has been acting a black and wicked part to you both, though neither of you knew it."
"Let me think," I say, slowly; "yes, I remember now. Rarely as I have been to The Towers, she has always contrived some excuse for sending us off together. . . . But what should she do it for—what object could she have had?"
"God knows! To take your good name, perhaps."
"Yes," I say, recalling her evil threat three months ago, that "she would have my good name, too." "But I can't believe it.
