lover's falseness?

"And you saw Horace, and he is ill?" says Georgie, anxiously. "Tell me
all, Clarissa."

"It is so hard to tell," says poor Clarissa; and then she turns her
face to the wall, and wishes honestly that all things for her might
now be at an end:

"Love, art thou bitter?
Sweet is death to me."

At this moment she could have gladly welcomed death.

"There are many things," she says, "but this worst of all. He does not
love me; he has never loved me. And there is some one else; and----"

"Who is it?" asks Georgie, breathlessly, though the truth as yet is
far from her.

"Ruth Annersley! She was there,--in his rooms!" says Clarissa; and,
after this, there is a silence that lasts for several minutes.

The unhappy truth is told. Clarissa, shamed and heartbroken, moves
away, that her companion may not see her face. As for Mrs. Branscombe,
at first intense wonder renders her motionless; and then, as the exact
meaning of this terrible story breaks in upon her, a great and
glorious gleam of unmistakable rapture lights all her face, and,
sinking upon a _prie-Dieu_ near her, she presses her hands tightly
together. That Dorian is exonerated, is her first thought; that he
will never forgive her, is her second; and this drives all the blood
from her cheeks, and the gladness from her heart, and brings her back
again to the emptiness and barrenness that have made life a wilderness
to her for so many months.

Going over to Clarissa, she lays her arms gently round her neck. There
seems to be a new bond, born of grief, between them now.

"Do not pity me," says Clarissa, entreatingly.

"Pity you? no! There is no occasion for it. You are fortunate in
having escaped such a fate as was in store for you. In time you will
forget all this, and be happy in some other way."

"Shall I?" says Clarissa, drearily. "But, in the mean time, what shall
I do? How shall I fill the blank here?" She lays her hand upon her
heart.

"He is a wretch," says Georgie, with sudden fire. "If I were a man, I
should kill him."

"You should rather be thankful to him," says Clarissa, with some
bitterness. "My misery has proved your joy. The shadow has been raised
from Dorian."

"Clarissa, if you speak to me like that you will break my heart," says
Georgie, deeply grieved. "How could I know joy when you are unhappy?
And--and, besides, there is no joy for me anywhere. Dorian will never
forgive me. How could he? I, his wife, was the on