'You are mistaken in thinking me your enemy,' she said.
'The wrong you did me when you gave your hand to Lord Montbarry was
not intentionally done. I forgave you my sufferings in his lifetime.
I forgive you even more freely now that he has gone.'
Henry heard her with mingled emotions of admiration and distress.
'Say no more!' he exclaimed. 'You are too good to her; she is not
worthy of it.'
The interruption passed unheeded by Lady Montbarry. The simple
words in which Agnes had replied seemed to have absorbed the whole
attention of this strangely-changeable woman. As she listened,
her face settled slowly into an expression of hard and tearless sorrow.
There was a marked change in her voice when she spoke next.
It expressed that last worst resignation which has done with hope.
'You good innocent creature,' she said, 'what does your
amiable forgiveness matter? What are your poor little wrongs,
in the reckoning for greater wrongs which is demanded of me?
I am not trying to frighten you, I am only miserable about myself.
Do you know what it is to have a firm presentiment of calamity that
is coming to you--and yet to hope that your own positive conviction
will not prove true? When I first met you, before my marriage,
and first felt your influence over me, I had that hope.
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