“To what good? Why would you force upon me the evidences of my dishonour?”
“I ask you to read them.”
“And if I should,” replied Lygon, bitterly, “and if they should prove, as I suppose by your urging it you think they will prove, somewhat less conclusive than such cursed letters usually are; if it should chance to turn out that they leave only doubts where we believe there is certainty—what then?”
“Then I will say, Arthur Lygon, carry out your resolve, and let the name of Laura be forgotten by you. That is my reply.”
“What do you expect?” asked Lygon in a low, despairing voice.
“I will not say. But I will ask you once more. If these letters utterly refute themselves, or, rather, prove that poor Urquhart read them wrong, and interpreted them into a terrible falsehood; if, in your own judgment, and I will ask no other, they testify to the truth and innocence of Laura, will you accept that testimony?”
“Hawkesley, you have not thought over all this as I have done. Heaven forbid you should ever have need to give such thoughts to anything in this world! But even you, with all your affectionate resolution to see comfort where there is nothing but blackness and sorrow, even you must perceive that the very story you have adopted is Laura’s self-condemnation. There is a book of letters, such as must establish a woman’s innocence—my God, that I should be alive and speaking such words about my wife—and the fact that a scoundrel has these letters drags the woman from her home and separates her from her children for ever. What strong delusion has laid hold on you?”
“I will not argue it with you. I will only ask you to believe it possible, and to say what you will do, should I be right.”
“What else can I say than what I have said already? All is over between me and Laura. Let the inconceivable truth be that the letters are forgeries—do you assert that?”
“What then?”
“What—can you seriously hold such a thought? Does a woman fly her home in dread of a false charge? Would Laura have done so—Laura, whose courage at least was her virtue? Would she not have defied an accuser, and sent him to me to be dealt with as he deserved? Is it worth while to waste more time, Charles? Let us go to Versailles—or must I go alone?”
“Once more, will you see the letters? I do not ask you more.”
“So be it, if you will. You have them?”
“No—the poor girl herself, who risked all to obtain them, and who has borne them away so gallantly, has them in her own keeping, and will hardly part with them again except that they may pass into your hands. But when they are laid before you, I have your promise to read them?”
“You have.”
“One word more, and you shall go. I told you that the police officials, in proposing that this man should elude justice for the time, made the suggestion in your own interest. They naturally urged that vengeance on the murderer involved an exposure of the whole painful story which belongs to the crime, and that a woman’s honour is mixed up with that story. If Adair escapes, the tale is secret. If he is tried, it is public, and you have children.”
“Ah!” said Lygon, with a deep sigh. “You fling your whole case to the winds. What has an innocent woman to fear from the truth?”
“The world, which never accepts the truth?”
“To save pain, then, to a guilty wife, I am asked to pardon the murderer of one of the two dearest friends I had in the world.”
“Had it been my destiny to meet the fate of poor Robert, and I could have spoken a last request, it would have been that you abstained from revenge, under such circumstances. Do you think that I would not gladly stand by you and see the man guillotined? But the faces of your little children come between me and that scaffold.”
“Let us do right,” said Arthur Lygon, “and leave the rest to Providence. I am suffering under an undeserved punishment, and I will not deserve any part of it by foregoing my duty. That man has died by a crime brought about by the sin of my wife. So far as I can aid justice I will do so.”
“And little Fred and Walter, are they to be pointed at through life, Arthur, as the children of one who, as you believed, sinned?”
“I will hope that each will have strength to vindicate his own character, and then he need not care what is said of another’s.”
“And Clara?”
“Do not speak of Clara.”
“I must. I have a right to speak for her, loving her so well. Arthur, you know what the world is to woman. Do not think of Clara as she now is, a child at play. Add a few years, and think of her as a beautiful and loving girl, whose destiny it would be to make some good fellow happy—only his friends look at her, and admire her, and pass on, and next day come and tell him that her mother was compromised in a sad French story, and that a daughter is, most frequently, what her mother was—could you bear to know that such things were said, Lygon?”
“You work hard upon my feelings, Charles, and now listen in return. I have all through life sought to act upon principle, and it is not when I come to the hardest trial of life that I ought to give way. And I will not. I would give my life for those children, but I will not forget my duty because hereafter my having done it may cause them pain and suffering. I will do my duty.”
“You will do all in your power to arrest Adair?”
“I will, and I have waited too long. I must now go.”
“I will not attempt to delay you any longer.”
“And unless I am seconded by the police, I will go to a member of the government, and formally accuse them of screening the assassin. There may be reasons why they will not willingly lie under such a charge, and you can prove the proposition that has been made.”
“I can. I will follow you to Versailles, Arthur. I have letters to write.”
Lygon was at the door when he turned, and