[The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers by Mary Cholmondeley]@TWC D-Link bookThe Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers CHAPTER XXVII 10/29
We are affianced. We are as one.
I bring sorrow upon her I love." "She knows, then ?" asked Charles, hoarsely, hating himself for being such a hypocrite, but unable to refrain from putting a leading question. "She knows that some one--a person--is at Vandon," replied Dare, "who calls herself my wife, but I tell her it is not true and she, all goodness, all heavenly calm, she trusts me, and once again she promises to marry me if I am free, as I tell her, as I swear to her." Charles listened in astonishment.
He saw Dare was speaking the truth, but that Ruth could have given such a promise was difficult to believe. He did not know, what Dare even had not at all realized, that she had given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his divorced wife, whether legally or illegally divorced. Dare had understood the promise to depend on the legality or illegality of that divorce, and told Charles so in all good faith.
With an extraordinary effort of reticence he withheld the name of his affianced, and pressing Charles's arm, begged him to ask no more.
And Charles, half-sorry, half-contemptuous, wholly ashamed of having allowed such a confidence to be forced upon him, marched on in silence, now divided between mortal anxiety for Raymond and pity for Dare, now striving to keep down a certain climbing rapturous emotion which would not be suppressed. One of the servants had waited up for their return, and, after getting Dare something to eat, Charles took him up to the room which had been prepared for himself, and then, feeling he had done his duty by him, and that he was safe for the present, went back to smoke by the smoking-room fire till Ralph came in, which was not till several hours later.
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