The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.--Oh, yes! this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against it--as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a clever woman--here is an experienced woman. And yet--though she has seen me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times--she has never once discovered the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct in one light--it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"
He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was--naturally, I think--a little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of the truth as that? I appeal to the women!
"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same mistake again--I promise you that!"
He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the face.
"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room--didn't you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her--was there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"
"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I liked you and trusted you--and I failed to understand it. That's all."
"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"
It was true. He _had_ tried.
"When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discoloration of his face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with her, in his own interests?"
True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.