“And you so young, Louisa!” he said with pity.
“And I so young. In this condition, father – for I show you now, without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it – you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I love him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you think more leniently of his errors.”
As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face went on.
“When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul.”
“Louisa!” he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had passed between them in their former interview.
“I do not reproach you, father; I make no complaint. I am here with another object.”
“What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.”
“I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. These seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care to so much for me.”
“For you, Louisa?”
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
“I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how be gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.”
Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
“I have done no worse; I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know!”
She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders and pressed them both upon her side; while in her face, not like itself – and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say – the feelings long suppressed broke loose.
“This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means!”
He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, “I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground!” And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying an insensible heap, at his feet.