"Ah, that was easy."--She spoke listlessly.--"He didn't care anything about me; I used to give him money. I sold my pearls--all my jewelry, in fact. Yes"--as Gerard uttered a horrified exclamation--"it was a terrible bondage, but what could I do? He had me in his power. I used to wonder if the marriage were legal, but there was no one whom I dared ask. And then I thought sometimes that he might die--I had all sorts of wild ideas; but nothing happened, and meanwhile he threatened--to tell you everything. I bought him off twice, and then--this last time"--she paused--"this last time I promised him all my income if he would give me up forever, and never trouble me again. Ah, you think it unpardonable, I see"--she put out her hand with a deprecating gesture--"but you don't know what it is to be tempted--desperate. I was determined I wouldn't ruin my life. And then--then"--her voice faltered--"this evening when you seemed so happy, so trustful--that was what hurt me, Julian--it was easier when you were jealous, suspicious, as you were at first--it came to me suddenly that I couldn't begin the New Year--I couldn't begin our life together with this--this terrible secret weighing on my soul. And so I--I told you"----
Elizabeth's voice faltered, she raised her eyes in a half conscious appeal. It seemed to her for the moment as if the agony of that confession must make amends to some extent even for such deceit as hers. But Gerard's face did not soften. Her whole conduct seemed to him monstrous, incredible. He could not accept as atonement this tardy repentance, the fact that she had told him the truth--at the eleventh hour.
The thought occurred to him, which she had herself suggested, earlier in the evening. He remembered chance gossip of the Neighborhood about her antecedents, listened to vaguely even before he knew her, and haunting him afterwards in the first days of their acquaintance, till love had made him cast it aside, as a thing of no importance. Now it recurred to his mind as the only explanation--he did not accept it as an excuse--of this weakness which seemed otherwise inexplicable. No doubt there must be, he told himself, in the child of such parents,--it would be strange if there were not--some hereditary taint, some lack of moral fibre, which curiously imperceptible in other ways, must needs assert itself in any great moral crisis. The thought, which might have softened him, seemed at the time only to steel him the more against her.