When did he ever try to do anything for me and
I stood in his way?"
"When he gave you one of the loveliest of women, my lord," said Mr.
Graham with solemn, faltering voice, "and you left her to die in
neglect and her child to be brought up by strangers."
The marquis gave a cry. The unexpected answer had roused the
slowly-gnawing death and made it bite deeper.
"What have _you_ to do," he almost screamed, "with my affairs? It was
for _me_ to introduce what I chose of them. You presume."
"Pardon me, my lord: you led me to what I was bound to say. Shall I
leave you, my lord?"
The marquis made no answer. "God knows I loved her," he said after a
while with a sigh.
"You loved her, my lord?"
"I did, by God!"
"Love a woman like that and come to this?"
"Come to this? We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or later.
Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub?"
"That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to lose her. In
the name of God, have you no desire to see her again?"
"It would be an awkward meeting," said the marquis.
His was an old love, alas! He had not been capable of the sort that
defies change. It had faded from him until it seemed one of the things
that are not. Although his being had once glowed in its light, he
could now speak of a meeting as awkward.
"Because you wronged her?" suggested the schoolmaster.
"Because they lied to me, by God!"
"Which they dared not have done had you not lied to them first.
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