Part 15 (2/2)

With that extraordinary preface, she suddenly turned my way and poured out a perfect torrent of words on me.

”You hear how the Major speaks to me?” she began. ”He blames me--poor Me--for everything that has happened. I am as innocent as the new-born babe. I acted for the best. I thought you wanted the book. I don't know now what made you faint dead away when I opened it. And the Major blames Me! As if it was my fault! I am not one of the fainting sort myself; but I feel it, I can tell you. Yes! I feel it, though I don't faint about it. I come of respectable parents--I do. My name is Hoighty--Miss Hoighty. I have my own self-respect; and it's wounded. I say my self-respect is wounded, when I find myself blamed without deserving it.

You deserve it, if anybody does. Didn't you tell me you were looking for a book? And didn't I present it to you promiscuously, with the best intentions? I think you might say so yourself, now the doctor has brought you to again. I think you might speak up for a poor girl who is worked to death with singing and languages and what not--a poor girl who has n.o.body else to speak for her. I am as respectable as you are, if you come to that. My name is Hoighty. My parents are in business, and my mamma has seen better days, and mixed in the best of company.”

There Miss Hoighty lifted her handkerchief again to her face, and burst modestly into tears behind it.

It was certainly hard to hold her responsible for what had happened.

I answered as kindly as I could, and I attempted to speak to Major Fitz-David in her defense. He knew what terrible anxieties were oppressing me at that moment; and, considerately refusing to hear a word, he took the task of consoling his young prima donna entirely on himself. What he said to her I neither heard nor cared to hear: he spoke in a whisper. It ended in his pacifying Miss Hoighty, by kissing her hand, and leading her (as he might have led a d.u.c.h.ess) out of the room.

”I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you--at such a time as this,”

he said, very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. ”I can't tell you how grieved I am at what has happened. I was careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if I could only have foreseen--”

I let him proceed no further. No human forethought could have provided against what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffered under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept in the dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that was now of any interest to me--the subject of my unhappy husband.

”How did he come to this house?” I asked.

”He came here with Mr. Benjamin shortly after I returned,” the Major replied.

”Long after I was taken ill?”

”No. I had just sent for the doctor--feeling seriously alarmed about you.”

”What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel and miss me?”

”Yes. He returned earlier than he had antic.i.p.ated, and he felt uneasy at not finding you at the hotel.”

”Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the hotel?”

”No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin to inquire about you.

What he heard from your old friend I cannot say. I only know that Mr.

Benjamin accompanied him when he came here.”

This brief explanation was quite enough for me--I understood what had happened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about my absence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin would be persuaded without difficulty to repeat the few words which had pa.s.sed between us on the subject of Major Fitz-David. My husband's presence in the Major's house was perfectly explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room at the very time when I was just recovering my senses still remained to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriously embarra.s.sed when I put the question to him.

”I hardly know how to explain it to you,” he said. ”Eustace has surprised and disappointed me.”

He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words: his looks alarmed me.

”Eustace has not quarreled with you?” I said.

”Oh no!”

”He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?”

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