With such a man as Miserrimus Dexter, and with such a purpose as I had in view, no half-confidences were possible. I must either risk the most unreserved acknowledgment of the interests that I really had at stake, or I must make the best excuse that occurred to me for abandoning my contemplated experiment at the last moment. In my present critical situation, no such refuge as a middle course lay before me--even if I had been inclined to take it. As things were, I ran risks, and plunged headlong into my own affairs at starting.
"Thus far, you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter," I said. "You are, as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I are not living together at the present time."
"Is it necessary to mention your husband?" he asked, coldly, without looking up from his embroidery, and without pausing in his work.
"It is absolutely necessary," I answered. "I can explain myself to you in no other way."
He bent his head, and sighed resignedly.
"You and your husband are not living together at the present time," he resumed. "Does that mean that Eustace has left you?"
"He has left me, and has gone abroad."
"Without any necessity for it?"
"Without the least necessity."
"Has he appointed no time for his return to you?"
"If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, Eustace will never return to me."
For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery--with a sudden appearance of interest.
"Is the quarrel so serious as that?" he asked. "Are you free of each other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties?"
The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my liking. The look he fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly suggested that I had trusted myself alone with him, and that he might end in taking advantage of it. I reminded him quietly, by my manner more than by my words, of the respect which he owed to me.
"You are entirely mistaken," I said. "There is no anger--there is not even a misunderstanding between us. Our parting has cost bitter sorrow, Mr. Dexter, to him and to me."
He submitted to be set right with ironical resignation. "I am all attention," he said, threading his needle. "Pray go on; I won't interrupt you again." Acting on this invitation, I told him the truth about my husband and myself quite unreservedly, taking care, however, at the same time, to put Eustace's motives in the best light that they would bear. Miserrimus Dexter dropped his embroidery on his lap, and laughed softly to himself, with an impish enjoyment of my poor little narrative, which set every nerve in me on edge as I looked at him.