She did not use to know there were doors or windows in the house--and now she goes out three times in a week.It is to meet some one,I'll lay my life on't."Where is she gone?"--"To my grandmother's,Sir.""Where does your grandmother live now?"--"At Somers'Town."Iimmediately set out to Somers'Town.I passed one or two streets,and at last turned up King Street,thinking it most likely she would return that way home.I passed a house in King Street where I had once lived,and had not proceeded many paces,ruminating on chance and change and old times,when I saw her coming towards me.I felt a strange pang at the sight,but I thought her alone.Some people before me moved on,and I saw another person with her.THE MURDER WAS OUT.It was a tall,rather well-looking young man,but I did not at first recollect him.We passed at the crossing of the street without speaking.Will you believe it,after all that had past between us for two years,after what had passed in the last half-year,after what had passed that very morning,she went by me without even changing countenance,without expressing the slightest emotion,without betraying either shame or pity or remorse or any other feeling that any other human being but herself must have shewn in the same situation.She had no time to prepare for acting a part,to suppress her feelings--the truth is,she has not one natural feeling in her bosom to suppress.I turned and looked--they also turned and looked and as if by mutual consent,we both retrod our steps and passed again,in the same way.I went home.I was stifled.I could not stay in the house,walked into the street and met them coming towards home.As soon as he had left her at the door (I fancy she had prevailed with him to accompany her,dreading some violence)I returned,went up stairs,and requested an interview.Tell her,I said,I'm in excellent temper and good spirits,but I must see her!She came smiling,and I said,"Come in,my dear girl,and sit down,and tell me all about it,how it is and who it is."--"What,"she said,"do you mean Mr.C----?""Oh,"said I,"Then it is he!Ah!you rogue,I always suspected there was something between you,but you know you denied it lustily:why did you not tell me all about it at the time,instead of letting me suffer as I have done?
But,however,no reproaches.I only wish it may all end happily and honourably for you,and I am satisfied.But,"I said,"you know you used to tell me,you despised looks."--"She didn't think Mr.C----was so particularly handsome.""No,but he's very well to pass,and a well-grown youth into the bargain."Pshaw!let me put an end to the fulsome detail.I found he had lived over the way,that he had been lured thence,no doubt,almost a year before,that they had first spoken in the street,and that he had never once hinted at marriage,and had gone away,because (as he said)they were too much together,and that it was better for her to meet him occasionally out of doors."There could be no harm in them walking together.""No,but you may go some where afterwards."--"One must trust to one's principle for that."Consummate hypocrite!I told her Mr.M----,who had married her sister,did not wish to leave the house.I,who would have married her,did not wish to leave it.I told her I hoped I should not live to see her come to shame,after all my love of her;but put her on her guard as well as I could,and said,after the lengths she had permitted herself with me,I could not help being alarmed at the influence of one over her,whom she could hardly herself suppose to have a tenth part of my esteem for her!!She made no answer to this,but thanked me coldly for my good advice,and rose to go.I begged her to sit a few minutes,that I might try to recollect if there was anything else I wished to say to her,perhaps for the last time;and then,not finding anything,I bade her good night,and asked for a farewell kiss.Do you know she refused;so little does she understand what is due to friendship,or love,or honour!
We parted friends,however,and I felt deep grief,but no enmity against her.I thought C----had pressed his suit after I went,and had prevailed.There was no harm in that--a little fickleness or so,a little over-pretension to unalterable attachment--but that was all.She liked him better than me--it was my hard hap,but I must bear it.I went out to roam the desert streets,when,turning a corner,whom should I meet but her very lover?I went up to him and asked for a few minutes'conversation on a subject that was highly interesting to me and I believed not indifferent to him:and in the course of four hours' talk,it came out that for three months previous to my quitting London for Scotland,she had been playing the same game with him as with me--that he breakfasted first,and enjoyed an hour of her society,and then I took my turn,so that we never jostled;and this explained why,when he came back sometimes and passed my door,as she was sitting in my lap,she coloured violently,thinking if her lover looked in,what a denouement there would be.He could not help again and again expressing his astonishment at finding that our intimacy had continued unimpaired up to so late a period after he came,and when they were on the most intimate footing.She used to deny positively to him that there was anything between us,just as she used to assure me with impenetrable effrontery that "Mr.C----was nothing to her,but merely a lodger."All this while she kept up the farce of her romantic attachment to her old lover,vowed that she never could alter in that respect,let me go to Scotland on the solemn and repeated assurance that there was no new flame,that there was no bar between us but this shadowy love--I leave her on this understanding,she becomes more fond or more intimate with her new lover;he quitting the house (whether tired out or not,I can't say)--in revenge she ceases to write to me,keeps me in wretched suspense,treats me like something loathsome to her when I return to enquire the cause,denies it with scorn and impudence,destroys me and shews no pity,no desire to soothe or shorten the pangs she has occasioned by her wantonness and hypocrisy,and wishes to linger the affair on to the last moment,going out to keep an appointment with another while she pretends to be obliging me in the tenderest point (which C----himself said was too much)....What do you think of all this?Shall I tell you my opinion?But I must try to do it in another letter.
