These are the last words known to have been uttered by Sir Francis Bendibow. He became unconscious soon after, and died the same afternoon. They were terrible words; and yet, when Marion recalled them long afterwards, it seemed to her that there might be, perhaps, something in them indicative of a moral state less abjectly depraved than was suggested by his previous half-complacent apathy.
The morning after Bendibow’s death, Merton Fillmore sent word to the Marquise Desmoines that he would call upon her that evening, if she found it convenient to receive him. She returned answer that she would expect him.
Ever since her parting with Philip Lancaster, the Marquise had kept herself secluded. After such an experience, even she needed time to draw her breath and look about her. It was more like defeat than anything else that had ever happened to her. It was defeat in fact, if not altogether in form. She had, whether consciously or unconsciously, shaped all her course and purpose to the end of being loved by Philip; and he did not love her. Nothing could disguise that truth: and it was additionally embittered by the discovery, almost unexpected to herself, that she not only preferred him to other men, but that she loved him, and that he was the only man she ever had loved. She had allowed him to perceive this, and the perception had failed to kindle in him a response. No doubt, she had assumed on the instant the semblance of cool indifference; she had divined her failure almost before she had made it; she had listened to his reply with a smile, and had dismissed him with defiance; but, after all, she knew in her inmost heart that she had been worsted; and whether Philip were as intimately conscious of it, or were conscious of it at all, made little difference. She had offered him more than any woman can offer with impunity, and he had professed himself unable to accept it.
After he left her, she was for a time supported by the ardor of defiant anger, which made her feel as if she had never been conquered,--had scarcely begun to fight, indeed: and had illimitable reserves of strength still to draw upon. But when this mood had flamed itself out, she began to realize how little her strength and resources could avail her. She had no longer any object to contend for. She had lost the day, and, no matter what her vigor and courage might be, the day in which she might redeem herself would never dawn. Philip was, to all intents and purposes, exanimate; and she might as hopefully strive, by dint of her beauty and brilliance, to restore life to a corpse from the hospital, as to stimulate Philip to feel even so much emotion toward her as would make him care whether she loved him or hated him. The shock of Marion’s loss, and the self-revelation it had wrought in him, had put him above or below the reach of other feelings. He had collapsed; and it was this collapse which had rendered him indomitable even by the Marquise Desmoines.