She raised herself from her drooping attitude, and stood with averted face; but still she did not speak.
"Perhaps you hardly know what I mean. I am willing—anxious—to give my whole life to you, Enid, my child. If you can trust yourself to my hands, I will take such care of you that you shall never know trouble or sorrow again, if care can avert it. Give me the right to do this for you, dear. You shall not have cause to repent your trust. Look at me, Enid, and tell me that you trust me."
Why that insistence on the word "trust"? Was it—strange contradiction—because he felt himself so utterly unworthy of her confidence? He said not a word of love.
Enid looked round at him at last. Her gentle face was pale, her lashes were wet with tears, but the traces of emotion were not unbecoming to her. Even to Hubert's cold eyes, cold and critical in spite of himself, she was lovelier than ever.
"I want to trust you—I do trust you," she said; but there were trouble and perplexity in her voice. "I don't know what to do. You would not let me be deceived, Hubert? You would not let dear uncle be tricked and cheated into thinking—thinking—by Flossy, I mean——Oh, I can't tell you! If you knew what I know, you would understand."
Hubert had never been in greater danger of betraying his own secret. Knowing of no other, his first instinctive thought was that Enid had learnt the true story of her father's death and Flossy's share in bringing it about; but a second thought, quickly following the first, showed him that in that case she would never have said that she wanted to trust him, or that he would not let her and her uncle be deceived. No, it could not be that. But what was it?
By a terrible effort he kept himself from visibly blenching at her words. He stood still holding her hands, feeling himself a villain to the very lowest depths of his soul, but looking quietly down at her, with even a slight smile on the lips that—do what he would—had turned pale—the ruddy firelight glancing on his face prevented this change of color from being seen.
"But how can I understand," he said, "when I have not the slightest notion of what you mean?"
"You have not?"
"Not the least in the world."