"Something to make you look gay and bright, love--as I always wish to see you," she said, seating herself in her favorite attitude at his feet, and looking up at him sadly, with her arms resting on his knees.
"What are you thinking about, Rosamond?" he asked, after an interval of silence.
"I was wondering, Lenny, whether any woman in the world could be as fond of you as I am. I feel almost afraid that there are others who would ask nothing better than to live and die for you, as well as me. There is something in your face, in your voice, in all your ways--something besides the interest of your sad, sad affliction--that would draw any woman's heart to you, I think. If I were to die--"
"If you were to die!" He started as he repeated the words after her, and, leaning forward, anxiously laid his hand upon her forehead. "You are thinking and talking very strangely this morning, Rosamond! Are you not well?"
She rose on her knees and looked closer at him, her face brightening a little, and a faint smile just playing around her lips. "I wonder if you will always be as anxious about me, and as fond of me, as you are now?" she whispered, kissing his hand as she removed it from her forehead. He leaned back again in the chair, and told her jestingly not to look too far into the future. The words, lightly as they were spoken, struck deep into her heart. "There are times, Lenny," she said, "when all one's happiness in the present depends upon one's certainty of the future." She looked at the letter, which her husband had left open on a table near him, as she spoke; and, after a momentary struggle with herself, took it in her hand to read it. At the first word her voice failed her; the deadly paleness overspread her face again; she threw the letter back on the table, and walked away to the other end of the room.
"The future?" asked Leonard. "What future, Rosamond, can you possibly mean?"
"Suppose I meant our future at Porthgenna?" she said, moistening her dry lips with a few drops of water. "Shall we stay here as long as we thought we should, and be as happy as we have been everywhere else? You told me on the journey that I should find it dull, and that I should be driven to try all sorts of extraordinary occupations to amuse myself. You said you expected that I should begin with gardening and end by writing a novel. A novel!" She approached her husband again, and watched his face eagerly while she went on. "Why not? More women write novels now than men. What is to prevent me from trying? The first great requisite, I suppose, is to have an idea of a story; and that I have got." She advanced a few steps farther, reached the table on which the letter lay, and placed her hand on it, keeping her eyes still fixed intently on Leonard's face.
"And what is your idea, Rosamond?" he asked.
"This," she replied. "I mean to make the main interest of the story centre on two young married people. They shall be very fond of each other--as fond as we are, Lenny--and they shall be in our rank of life. After they have been happily married some time, and when they have got one child to make them love each other more dearly than ever, a terrible discovery shall fall upon them like a thunderbolt. The husband shall have chosen for his wife a young lady bearing as ancient a family name as--"
"As your name?" suggested Leonard.
"As the name of the Treverton family," she continued, after a pause, during which her hand had been restlessly moving the letter to and fro on the table. "The husband shall be well-born--as well-born as you, Lenny--and the terrible discovery shall be, that his wife has no right to the ancient name that she bore when he married her."
"I can't say, my love, that I approve of your idea. Your story will decoy the reader into feeling an interest in a woman who turns out to be an impostor."
"No!" cried Rosamond, warmly. "A true woman--a woman who never stooped to a deception--a woman full of faults and failings, but a teller of the truth at all hazards and sacrifices. Hear me out, Lenny, before you judge." Hot tears rushed into her eyes; but she dashed them away passionately, and went on. "The wife shall grow up to womanhood, and shall marry, in total ignorance--mind that!--in total ignorance of her real history. The sudden disclosure of the truth shall overwhelm her--she shall find herself struck by a calamity which she had no hand in bringing about. She shall be staggered in her very reason by the discovery; it shall burst upon her when she has no one but herself to depend on; she shall have the power of keeping it a secret from her husband with perfect impunity; she shall be tried, she shall be shaken in her mortal frailness, by one moment of fearful temptation; she shall conquer it, and, of her own free will, she shall tell her husband all that she knows herself. Now, Lenny, what do you call that woman? an impostor?"
"No: a victim."
"Who goes of her own accord to the sacrifice? and who is to be sacrificed?"
"I never said that."
"What would you do with her, Lenny, if you were writing the story? I mean, how would you make her husband behave to her? It is a question in which a man's nature is concerned, and a woman is not competent to decide it. I am perplexed about how to end the story. How would you end it, love?" As she ceased, her voice sank sadly to its gentlest pleading tones. She came close to him, and twined her fingers in his hair fondly. "How would you end it, love?" she repeated, stooping down till her trembling lips just touched his forehead.
He moved uneasily in his chair, and replied--"I am not a writer of novels, Rosamond."
"But how would you act, Lenny, if you were that husband?"
"It is hard for me to say," he answered. "I have not your vivid imagination, my dear. I have no power of putting myself, at a moment's notice, into a position that is not my own, and of knowing how I should act in it."
"But suppose your wife was close to you--as close as I am now? Suppose she had just told you the dreadful secret, and was standing before you--as I am standing now--with the happiness of her whole life to come depending on one kind word from your lips? Oh, Lenny, you would not let her drop broken-hearted at your feet? You would know, let her birth be what it might, that she was still the same faithful creature who had cherished and served and trusted and worshipped you since her marriage-day, and who asked nothing in return but to lay her head on your bosom, and to hear you say that you loved her? You would know that she had nerved herself to tell the fatal secret, because, in her loyalty and love to her husband, she would rather die forsaken and despised, than live, deceiving him? You would know all this, and you would open your arms to the mother of your child, to the wife of your first love, though she was the lowliest of all lowly born women in the estimation of the world? Oh, you would, Lenny, I know you would!"
"Rosamond! how your hands tremble; how your voice alters! You are agitating yourself about this supposed story of yours, as if you were talking of real events."
"You would take her to your heart, Lenny? You would open your arms to her without an instant of unworthy doubt?"
"Hush! hush! I hope I should."
"Hope? only hope? Oh, think again, love, think again; and say you know you should!"
"Must I, Rosamond? Then I do say it." She drew back as the words passed his lips, and took the letter from the table.
"You have not yet asked me, Lenny, to read the letter that I found in the Myrtle Room. I offer to read it now of my own accord."
She trembled a little as she spoke those few decisive words, but her utterance of them was clear and steady, as if her consciousness of being now irrevocably pledged to make the disclosure had strengthened her at last to dare all hazards and end all suspense.
Her husband turned toward the place from which the sound of her voice had reached him, with a mixed expression of perplexity and surprise in his face. "You pass so suddenly from one subject to another," he said, "that I hardly know how to follow you.