brother
interfered too quickly. He was then forced to exculpate himself, to
confess rather than to tell his own story,--and to admit facts which
wore the air of having been concealed, and which had already been
conceived to be altogether damning if true. It was that journey to
Lowestoft, not yet a month old, which did the mischief,--a journey as
to which Hetta was not slow in understanding all that Roger Carbury
had thought about it, though Roger would say nothing of it to herself.
Paul had been staying at the seaside with this woman in amicable
intimacy,--this horrid woman,--in intimacy worse than amicable, and had
been visiting her daily at Islington! Hetta felt quite sure that he
had never passed a day without going there since the arrival of the
woman; and everybody would know what that meant. And during this very
hour he had been,--well, perhaps not exactly making love to herself,
but looking at her and talking to her, and behaving to her in a manner
such as could not but make her understand that he intended to make
love to her. Of course they had really understood it, since they had
met at Madame Melmotte's first ball, when she had made a plea that she
could not allow herself to dance with him more than,--say half-a-dozen
times. Of course she had not intended him then to know that she would
receive his love with favour, but equally of course she had known that
he must so feel it. She had not only told herself, but had told her
mother, that her heart was given away to this man; and yet the man
during this very time was spending his hours with a--woman, with a
strange American woman, to whom he acknowledged that he had been once
engaged. How could she not quarrel with him? How could she refrain
from telling him that everything must be over between them? Everybody
was against him,--her mother, her brother, and her cousin: and she
felt that she had not a word to say in his defence. A horrid woman! A
wretched, bad, bold American intriguing woman! It was terrible to her
that a friend of hers should ever have attached himself to such a
creature;--but that he should have come to her with a second tale of
love long, long before he had cleared himself from the first;--perhaps
with no intention of clearing himself from the first! Of course she
could not forgive him! No;--she would never forgive him. She would
break her heart for him. That was a matter of course; but she would
never forgive him. She knew well what it was that