wasn't," said Mrs Burnett, nestling into a corner of thecouch in her father's drawing-room. "I believe he was, though, poorfellow."
She gazed up at her portrait with her pretty girlish face wrinkling up,and these wrinkles seeming to have had work to get the better of thedimples in her baby cheeks and chin.
"He was dreadfully fond of me, Claire," she continued, "and I was veryfond of him. And then, you see, we were both so young."
Claire clasped her hands together and gazed at her sister with a facefull of wonder, she seemed so calm and unconcerned, as if it were someone else's trouble and not her own that had brought the tears into hereyes.
"But, May, why did not you confide in me?"
"Likely! You were always scolding and snubbing me, as it was. I don'tknow what you would have said if you had known. Besides, I was afraidof you in those days."
"May, you will drive me mad," said Claire, pacing the room.
"Nonsense; and don't go on running up and down the room like that. Besensible, and help me."
"Why have you not told me before?"
"I've been going to tell you heaps of times, but you've always hadsomething or other to worry about, and I've been put off."
"Till you knew that detection was inevitable; and now you come to me,"cried Claire reproachfully.
"Look here, Claire, are you going to talk sensibly, or am I to go tosome lady friend to help me? There's Mrs Pontardent."
"No, no," cried Claire excitedly. "You must not take anyone else intoyour confidence. Tell me all. But May, May, is this really true, or isit some miserable invention of your own?"
"Oh, it's true enough," said May sharply, as she arranged her bonnetstrings, and bent forward to catch a glimpse of her great ostrichfeather.
Claire looked at her with her face drawn with care and horror, while shewondered at the indifference of the little wife, and the easy way inwhich she was trying to shift the trouble and responsibility of herweakness and folly upon her sister.
"Why, May, you could not have been seventeen."
"Sixteen and a half," said May. "Heigho! I begin to feel quite an oldwoman now."
"But, Frank? Do you ever think of the consequences if he were to know?"
"Why, of course I do, you silly thing. Haven't I lain in bed and quakedhundreds of times for fear he should ever find out? How can you talkso? Why do you suppose I came to you, if it was not that I was afraidof his getting to know?"
"May, it would drive our father mad if all came out."
"Of course it would. Now you are beginning to wake up and understandwhy I have come."
"How could you accept Frank Burnett, and deceive him so?"
"How could I marry him? What would papa have said if I had refused?Don't talk stuff."
Claire's brow knit more and more, as she realised her sister's utterwant of principle, and her heart seemed rent by anger, pity, and grief.
"Besides, do you suppose I wanted to stop here and pinch and starve whena rich husband and home were waiting for _me_? Poor Louis was dead, andif I'd cried my eyes out every week and said I'd be a widow for ever andever, it would not have brought him to life."
Claire did not speak. Her words would not come, and she gazed in utterperplexity, struggling to realise the fact that the girlish little thingbefore her could possibly have been a widow and mother before she becameMrs Burnett.
"When--when did this begin?" said Claire at last.
"Now, don't talk to me like that, Claire, or you'll set me off crying myeyes blind, and I shall go home red and miserable, and Frank will findit all out."
"He must be told."
"Told?" cried May, starting up. "Told? If he is told, I'll go rightdown to the end of the pier and drown myself. He must never know, andpapa must never know. Do you think I've kept this a secret for morethan two years for them to be told?"
"They will be sure to know."
"Yes, if you tell them. Oh, Claire, Claire, I did think I could findhelp in my sister, now that I am in such terrible trouble."
"I will help you all I can, May," said Claire sadly; "but they mustknow."
"I tell you they must not," cried May angrily, and speaking like aspoiled child. "Frank would kill me, and as for poor, dear, darlingpapa, with all his troubles about getting you married and Mortonsettled, and Fred turning out so badly, it would kill him, and thenyou'd have a nice time of it, far worse than poor old mummy Teigne beingkilled."
"Oh, hush, May!" said Claire, with a horrified look.
"That moves you, does it, miss? Well, then, be reasonable. I don'tknow what to make of you of late, Claire; you seem to be so changed.Ah, you'll find the difference when you're a married woman."
Claire gazed down at her, with the trouble and perplexity seeming toincrease, while May Burnett arranged the folds of her dress, as she oncemore nestled in the corner of the old sofa, and seemed as if she wereposing herself to be pitied and helped.
Then she lifted her eyes towards the florid portrait on the wall, andsighed.
"Poor Louis! How he did flatter me. But he always did that, and Isuppose it was his flattering words made me love him so. I was veryfond of him."
"May," said Claire excitedly, "when was it you were married?"
"Oh, it was such fun. It was while I was staying at Aunt Jerdein's, andtaking the music lessons. I went out as usual, to go to Golden Squarefor my lesson as aunt thought, and Louis was waiting for me, and he tookme in a hackney coach with straw at the bottom and mouldy old cushions,and one of the windows broken. And we went to such a queer old churchsomewhere in the city, and were married--a little old church that smeltas mouldy as the hackney coach; and the funny old clergyman took snuffall over his surplice, and he did mumble so."
"And then?"
"Oh, Louis left Saltinville, you know, when I went up to London, andgave lessons at Aunt Jerdein's, and we used to see as much of each otheras we could, till he had to go back to Rome, and there, poor boy, youknow he died of fever."
Claire did not speak, but stood with her hands clasped before her,listening to the calm, cool, selfish words that seemed to come ripplingout from the prettily-curved mouth as if it were one of the simplest andmost matter-of-fact things in the world.
"It was a great trouble to me, of course, dear," May continued; and sheraised herself a little, to spread her handsome dress, so that it shouldfall in graceful folds. "I used to cry my eyes out, and I don't knowwhat I should have done if it had not been for Anne Brown."
"Anne Brown? Aunt Jerdein's servant?" said Claire bitterly. "Youtrusted her, then, in preference to your own sister."
"No, I didn't, baby. She found me out. And besides, I daren't havetold you. How you would have scolded me, you know," continued May."Anne was very good to me, and I went and stayed with her mother whenbaby was born, and then Anne left aunt soon after. Aunt thought, youknow, that I'd come down home, and, of course, you all thought I wasstill at aunt's. Anne Brown managed about the letters."
"Go on," said Claire, who listened as if this were all some horriblefiction that she was forced to hear.
"Then I did come home, and Anne Brown took care of poor baby with hermother, and it was terribly hard work to get money to send them, butsomehow I did it; and then you know about Frank Burnett, how poor dearpapa brought all that on."
Claire uttered a sigh that was almost a groan, but the pretty littlerosebud of a wife went prattling on, in selfish ignorance of the agonyshe was inflicting, dividing her attention between her dress and thepicture of herself that was smiling down at her from the wall.
"I suffered very much all that time, Claire dear, and, whenever I could,I used to go upstairs, lock myself in my room, and put on a littlewidow's cap I had--a very small one, dear, of white crape--and have agood cry about poor Louis. It was the only mourning I ever could wearfor him, and it was nearly always locked up in the bottom drawer; but Iused to carry a bit of black crape in my dress pocket, and touch thatnow and then. It was a little strip put through
my wedding ring andtied in a knot. There it is," she said, fishing it out of her dresspocket; "but the strip of crape only looks like a bit of black rag now."
She held out a tiny, plain gold ring for her sister to see, and itlooked so small that it seemed as if it had been used sometime when alittle girl had been playing at being married with some little boy, orat one of the child weddings that history records.
"Poor Louis!" sighed May. "I was very fond of him. Then, when I wasmarried again, of course I was able to send money up every week