The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

the Secret? how⁠—” She paused, with a heartsick consciousness of the slur that was cast on her birth; she paused, shrinking as she thought of the name that her husband had given to her, and of her own parentage, which the laws of society disdained to recognize.

“Why do you stop?” asked Leonard.

“I was afraid⁠—” she began, and paused again.

“Afraid,” he said, finishing the sentence for her, “that words of pity for that unhappy woman might wound my sensitive pride by reminding me of the circumstances of your birth? Rosamond! I should be unworthy of your matchless truthfulness toward me, if I, on my side, did not acknowledge that this discovery has wounded me as only a proud man can be wounded. My pride has been born and bred in me. My pride, even while I am now speaking to you, takes advantage of my first moments of composure, and deludes me into doubting, in face of all probability, whether the words you have read to me can, after all, be words of truth. But, strong as that inborn and inbred feeling is⁠—hard as it may be for me to discipline and master it as I ought, and must and will⁠—there is another feeling in my heart that is stronger yet.” He felt for her hand, and took it in his; then added⁠—“From the hour when you first devoted your life to your blind husband⁠—from the hour when you won all his gratitude, as you had already won all his love, you took a place in his heart, Rosamond, from which nothing, not even such a shock as has now assailed us, can move you! High as I have always held the worth of rank in my estimation, I have learned, even before the event of yesterday, to hold the worth of my wife, let her parentage be what it may, higher still.”

“Oh, Lenny, Lenny, I can’t hear you praise me, if you talk in the same breath as if I had made a sacrifice in marrying you! But for my blind husband I might never have deserved what you have just said of me. When I first read that fearful letter, I had one moment of vile, ungrateful doubt if your love for me would hold out against the discovery of the Secret. I had one moment of horrible temptation, that drew me away from you when I ought to have put the letter into your hand. It was the sight of you, waiting for me to speak again, so innocent of all knowledge of what happened close by you, that brought me back to my senses, and told me what I ought to do. It was the sight of my blind husband that made me conquer the temptation to destroy that letter in the first hour of discovering it. Oh, if I had been the hardest-hearted of women, could I have ever taken your hand again⁠—could I kiss you, could I lie down by your side, and hear you fall asleep, night after night, feeling that I had abused your blind dependence on me to serve my own selfish interests? knowing that I had only succeeded in my deceit because your affliction made you incapable of suspecting deception? No, no; I can hardly believe that the basest of women could be guilty of such baseness as that; and I can claim nothing more for myself than the credit of having been true to my trust. You said yesterday, love, in the Myrtle Room, that the one faithful friend to you in your blindness, who never failed, was your wife. It is reward enough and consolation enough for me, now that the worst is over, to know that you can say so still.”

“Yes, Rosamond, the worst is over; but we must not forget that there may be hard trials still to meet.”

“Hard trials, love? To what trials do you refer?”

“Perhaps, Rosamond, I overrate the courage that the sacrifice demands; but, to me at least, it will be a hard sacrifice of my own feelings to make strangers partakers in the knowledge that we now possess.”

Rosamond looked at her husband in astonishment. “Why need we tell the Secret to anyone?” she asked.

“Assuming that we can satisfy ourselves of the genuineness of that letter,” he answered, “we shall have no choice but to tell it to strangers. You can not forget the circumstances under which your father⁠—under which Captain Treverton⁠—”

“Call him my father,” said Rosamond, sadly. “Remember how he loved me, and how I loved him, and say ‘my father’ still.”

“I am afraid I must say ‘Captain Treverton’ now,” returned Leonard, “or I shall hardly be able to explain simply and plainly what it is very necessary that you should know. Captain Treverton died without leaving a will. His only property was the purchase-money of this house and estate; and you inherited it, as his next of kin⁠—”

Rosamond started back in her chair and clasped her hands in dismay. “Oh, Lenny,” she said simply, “I have thought so much of you, since I found the letter, that I never remembered this!”

“It is time to remember it, my love. If you are not Captain Treverton’s daughter, you have no right to one farthing of the fortune that you possess; and it must be restored at once to the person who is Captain Treverton’s next of kin⁠—or, in other words, to his brother.”

“To that man!” exclaimed Rosamond. “To that man who is a stranger to us, who holds our very name in contempt! Are we to be made poor that he may be made rich?⁠—”

“We are to do what is honorable and just, at any sacrifice of our own interests and ourselves,” said Leonard, firmly. “I believe, Rosamond, that my consent, as your husband, is necessary, according to the law, to effect this restitution. If Mr. Andrew Treverton was the bitterest enemy I had on earth, and if the restoring of this money utterly ruined us both in our worldly circumstances, I would give it