For the moment I could say nothing to her; the dreadful impression that I have tried to describe to you came back to me with the coming back of my life. As soon I could speak, I implored her to tell me the whole truth about the woman whom I had supplanted. You see, I had a faint hope that her good character might not really be deserved, that her noble letter was a skilful piece of hypocrisy--in short, that she secretly hated me, and was cunning enough to hide it.
No! the lady had been her friend from her girlhood, was as familiar with her as if they had been sisters--knew her positively to be as good, as innocent, as incapable of hating anybody, as the greatest saint that ever lived. My one last hope, that I had only felt an ordinary forewarning of danger in the presence of an ordinary enemy, was a hope destroyed for ever. There was one more effort I could make, and I made it. I went next to the man whom I am to marry.
I implored him to release me from my promise. He refused.
I declared I would break my engagement. He showed me letters from his sisters, letters from his brothers, and his dear friends--all entreating him to think again before he made me his wife;all repeating reports of me in Paris, Vienna, and London, which are so many vile lies. "If you refuse to marry me," he said, "you admit that these reports are true--you admit that you are afraid to face society in the character of my wife." What could I answer?
There was no contradicting him--he was plainly right: if I persisted in my refusal, the utter destruction of my reputation would be the result.
I consented to let the wedding take place as we had arranged it--and left him. The night has passed. I am here, with my fixed conviction--that innocent woman is ordained to have a fatal influence over my life.
I am here with my one question to put, to the one man who can answer it.
For the last time, sir, what am I--a demon who has seen the avenging angel? or only a poor mad woman, misled by the delusion of a deranged mind?'
Doctor Wybrow rose from his chair, determined to close the interview.
He was strongly and painfully impressed by what he had heard.
The longer he had listened to her, the more irresistibly the conviction of the woman's wickedness had forced itself on him.
He tried vainly to think of her as a person to be pitied--a person with a morbidly sensitive imagination, conscious of the capacities for evil which lie dormant in us all, and striving earnestly to open her heart to the counter-influence of her own better nature; the effort was beyond him. A perverse instinct in him said, as if in words, Beware how you believe in her!
'I have already given you my opinion,' he said. 'There is no sign of your intellect being deranged, or being likely to be deranged, that medical science can discover--as I understand it.
As for the impressions you have confided to me, I can only say that yours is a case (as I venture to think) for spiritual rather than for medical advice. Of one thing be assured: what you have said to me in this room shall not pass out of it.
Your confession is safe in my keeping.'
She heard him, with a certain dogged resignation, to the end.
'Is that all?' she asked.
'That is all,' he answered.
She put a little paper packet of money on the table.
'Thank you, sir. There is your fee.'
