"Who gave you this letter, Clara?" she asked calmly.
"I told you before,--Miss Vere herself."
"Why did she give it to you?" continued Thelma in a dull, sad voice.
Lady Winsleigh hesitated and stammered a little. "Well, because--because I asked her if the stories about Sir Philip were true. And she begged me to ask him not to visit her so often." Then, with an additional thought of malice, she said softly. "She doesn't wish to wrong you, Thelma,--of course, she's not a very good woman, but I think she feels sorry for you!"
The girl uttered a smothered cry of anguish, as though she had been stabbed to the heart. She!--to be actually pitied by Violet Vere, because she had been unable to keep her husband's love! This idea tortured her very soul,--but she was silent.
"I thought you were my friend, Clara?" she said suddenly, with a strange wistfulness.
"So I am, Thelma," murmured Lady Winsleigh, a guilty flush coloring her cheeks.
"You have made me very miserable," went on Thelma gravely, and with pathetic simplicity, "and I am sorry indeed that we ever met. I was so happy till I knew you!--and yet I was very fond of you! I am sure you mean everything for the best, but I cannot think it is so. And it is all so dark and desolate now--why have you taken such pains to make me sad? Why have you so often tried to make me doubt my husband's love?--why have you come to-day so quickly to tell me I have lost it? But for you, I might never have known this sorrow,--I might have died soon, in happy ignorance, believing in my darling's truth as I believe in God!"
Her voice broke, and a hard sob choked her utterance. For once Lady Winsleigh's conscience smote her--for once she felt ashamed, and dared not offer consolation to the innocent soul she had so wantonly stricken. For a minute or two there was silence--broken only by the monotonous ticking of the clock and the crackling of the fire.
Presently Thelma spoke again. "I will ask you to go away now and leave me, Clara," she said simply. "When the heart is sorrowful, it is best to be alone. Good-bye!" And she gently held out her hand.
"Poor Thelma!" said Lady Winsleigh, taking it with an affectation of tenderness. "What will you do?"
Thelma did not answer; she sat mute and rigid.