"Sit down here," she said, pointing to a velvet fauteuil; "I am going to
make you my judge. Ah, Basil, for this one night I may call you Basil;
perhaps after you have heard what I have to say, you will never be my
knight again; it may change you."
"I shall belong to you, and ask no greater happiness than to serve you
until I die," he replied,
A fan lay on the table by her side, with jeweled handle, and made of
white, soft feathers. She opened it and quietly stirred the warm,
perfumed air.
"I could only tell my trouble to you," she began, in her soft, caressing
voice. "You will understand me, because you know what it is to have
wishes, hopes and aspirations that are never realized. You know what it
is to be unworldly and unlike others.
"I was but a girl when I was married, Basil--an innocent, unsuspecting
girl, just seventeen. I might plead, in excuse of what followed, that I
was married without my own inclination being consulted--unwillingly
sacrificed to money that never has done me any good, and never will. I
might plead my youth, my unhappiness, the utter want of congeniality
with the man I married; but I will not. You shall judge me without
excuses. I must, however, tell you that at first, for the first two
years of my married life, I was in despair. There seemed to me no hope,
no respite--nothing but despair. Now I have grown accustomed to my
misery, and can wear it with a smile; then it was otherwise.
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