The Uttermost Farthing | Page 7

the sight of her caresses to her child had always filled him.
"Peggy," he whispered, "tell me, my beloved, why are you being so
good to me--now?"
She made no direct answer to the question. Instead, she moved away a
little, and raised herself on her elbow; her blue eyes, filled with a
strange solemnity, rested on his moved face.
"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something, Laurence. I want you
to know that I understand how--how angelic you have been to me all
these years. Ever since we first knew one another, you have given me
everything--everything in exchange for nothing."
And as he shook his head, she continued, "Yes, for nothing! For a long
time I tried to persuade myself that this was not so--I tried to believe
that you were as contented as I had taught myself to be. I first realised
what a hindrance"--she hesitated for a moment, and then said the two
words--"our friendship--must have proved to you four years ago,--when
you might have gone to St. Petersburg."
As Vanderlyn allowed an exclamation of surprise to escape him, she
went on, "Yes, Laurence, you have never known that I knew of that
chance--of that offer. Adèle de Léra heard of it, and told me; she
begged me then, oh! so earnestly, to give you up--to let you go."
"It was no business of hers," he muttered, "I never thought for a

moment of accepting----"
"--But you would have done so if you had never known me, if we had
not been friends?" She looked up at him, hoping, longing, for a quick
word of denial.
But Vanderlyn said no such word. Instead, he fell manlike into the trap
she had perhaps unwittingly laid for him.
"If I had never known you?" he repeated, "why, Peggy--dearest--my
whole life would have been different if I had never known you! Do you
really think that I should have been here in Paris, doing what I am now
doing--or rather doing nothing--if we had never met?"
The honest, unmeditated answer made her wince, but she went on, as if
she had not heard it--
"As you know, I did not take Adèle's advice, but I have never forgotten,
Laurence, some of the things she said."
A look which crossed his face caused her to redden, and add hastily,
"She's not given to speaking of you--of us; indeed she's not! She never
again alluded to the matter; but the other day when I was persuading
her,--she required a good deal of persuasion, Laurence--to consent to
my plan, I reminded her of all she had said four years ago."
"And what was it that she did say four years ago?" asked Vanderlyn
with a touch of angry curiosity; "as Madame de Léra is a Frenchwoman,
and a pious Catholic, I presume she tried to make you believe that our
friendship was wrong, and could only lead to one thing----" he stopped
abruptly.
"No," said Peggy, quietly, "she did not think then that our friendship
would lead to--to this; she thought in some ways better of me than I
deserve. But she did tell me that I was taking a great responsibility on
myself, and that if anything happened--for instance, if I died----"
Vanderlyn again made a restless, almost a contemptuous movement--"I
should have been the cause of your wasting the best years of your life; I

should have broken and spoilt your career, and all--all for nothing."
"Nothing?" exclaimed Vanderlyn passionately. "Ah! Peggy, do not say
that. You know, you must know, that our love--I will not call it
friendship," he went on resolutely, "for this one week let no such false
word be uttered between us--you must know, I say, that our love has
been everything to me! Till I met you, my life was empty, miserable;
since I met you it has been filled, satisfied, and that even if I have
received what Madame de Léra dares to call--nothing!"
He spoke with a fervour, a conviction, which to the woman over whom
he was now leaning brought exquisite solace. At last he was speaking
as she had longed to hear him speak.
"You don't know," she whispered brokenly, "how happy you make me
by saying this to-night, Laurence. I have sometimes wondered lately if
you cared for me as much as you used to care?"
Vanderlyn's dark face contracted with pain; he was no Don Juan,
learned in the byways of a woman's heart. Then, almost roughly, he
caught her to him, and she, looking up, saw a strange glowing look
come over his face--a look which was, even to her, an all-sufficing
answer, for it told of the baffled longing, of the abnegation, and, even
now, of the restraint and selflessness, of the man who loved her.
"Did