December came in. The Alps were covered with snow; Grenoble borrowed the shade, and looked cold, and white, and sleety, and sloppy; the gutters, running through the middle of certain of the streets, were unusually black, and the people crept along especially dismal. Close to the fire in the barn of a French bedroom, full of windows, and doors, and draughts, with its wide hearth and its wide chimney, into which we could put four or five of our English ones, shivered Lady Isabel Vane. She had an invalid cap on, and a thick woolen invalid shawl, and she shook and shivered perpetually; though she had drawn so close to the wood fire that there was a danger of her petticoats igniting, and the attendant had frequently to spring up and interpose between them and the crackling logs. Little did it seem to matter to Lady Isabel; she sat in one position, her countenance the picture of stony despair.
So had she sat, so looking, since she began to get better. She had had a long illness, terminating in a low fever; but the attendants whispered among themselves that miladi would soon get about if she would only rouse herself. She had got so far about as to sit up in the windy chamber; and it seemed to be to her a matter of perfect indifference whether she ever got out of it.
This day she had partaken of her early dinner--such as it was, for her appetite failed--and had dozed asleep in the arm chair, when a noise arose from below, like a carriage driving into the courtyard through the /porte cochere/. It instantly aroused her. Had /he/ come?
"Who is it?" she asked of the nurse.
"Miladi, it is monsieur; and Pierre is with him. I have begged milady often and often not to fret, for monsieur would surely come; miladi, see, I am right."
The girl departed, closing the door, and Lady Isabel sat looking at it, schooling her patience. Another moment, and it was flung open.
Sir Francis Levison approached to greet her as he came in. She waved him off, begging him, in a subdued, quiet tone, not to draw too near, as any little excitement made her faint now. He took a seat opposite to her, and began pushing the logs together with his boot, as he explained that he really could not get away from town before.
"Why did you come now?" she quietly rejoined.
"Why did I come?" repeated he. "Are these all the thanks a fellow gets for travelling in this inclement weather? I thought you would at least have been glad to welcome me, Isabel."
"Sir Francis," she rejoined, speaking still with almost unnatural calmness, as she continued to do throughout the interview--though the frequent changes in her countenance, and the movement of her hands, when she laid them from time to time on her chest to keep down its beating, told what effort the struggle cost her--"Sir Francis, I am glad, for one reason, to welcome you; we must come to an understanding one with the other; and, so far, I am pleased that you are here. It was my intention to have communicated with you by letter as soon as I found myself capable of the necessary exertion, but your visit has removed the necessity. I wish to deal with you quite unreservedly, without concealment, or deceit; I must request you so to deal with me."
"What do you mean by 'deal?' " he asked, settling the logs to his apparent satisfaction.
"To speak and act. Let there be plain truth between us at this interview, if there never has been before."
"I don't understand you."
"Naked truth, unglossed over," she pursued, bending her eyes determinately upon him. "It /must/ be."
"With all my heart," returned Sir Francis. "It is you who have thrown out the challenge, mind."
"When you left in July you gave me a sacred promise to come back in time for our marriage; you know what I mean when I say 'in time,' but--"
"Of course I meant to do so when I gave the promise," he interrupted.
"But no sooner had I set my foot in London than I found myself overwhelmed with business, and away from it I could not get. Even now I can only remain with you a couple of days, for I must hasten back to town."
"You are breaking faith already," she said, after hearing him calmly to the end. "Your words are not words of truth, but of deceit. You did not intend to be back in time for the marriage, or otherwise you would have caused it to take place ere you went at all."
"What fancies you do take up!" uttered Francis Levison.
"Some time subsequent to your departure," she quietly went on, "one of the maids was setting to rights the clothes in your dressing-closet, and she brought me a letter she found in one of the pockets. I saw by the date that it was one of those two which you received on the morning of your departure. It contained the information that the divorce was pronounced."
She spoke so quietly, so apparently without feeling or passion, that Sir Francis was agreeably astonished. He should have less trouble in throwing off the mask. But he was an ill-tempered man; and to hear that the letter had been found to have the falseness of his fine protestations and promises laid bare, did not improve his temper now.
Lady Isabel continued,--"It would have been better to have undeceived me then; to have told me that the hopes I was cherishing for the sake of the unborn child were worse than vain."
"I did not judge so," he replied. "The excited state you then appeared to be in, would have precluded your listening to any sort of reason."
Her heart beat a little quicker; but she stilled it.
"You deem that it was not in reason that I should aspire to be the wife of Sir Francis Levison?"
He rose and began kicking at the logs; with the heel of his boot this time.
"Well, Isabel, you must be aware that it is an awful sacrifice for a man in my position to marry a divorced woman."
The hectic flushed into her thin cheeks, but her voice sounded calm as before.
"When I expected or wished, for the 'sacrifice,' it was not for my own sake; I told you so then. But it was not made; and the child's inheritance is that of sin and shame. There he lies."
