"Ah, Cynthia, I had better let you think me a fool or a brute than lead you into this!" cried Hubert.
"But I should never think you a fool or a brute, whatever you did."
"You do not know what you might think of me—in other circumstances."
"Try," she said, almost in a whisper, slipping her hand into his.
But he shook his head and looked down, knitting his brows uneasily.
"What will satisfy you?" she asked at length, evidently convinced from his manner that something was more seriously amiss than she had thought. "Do you not know that where I give my love I give my whole trust and confidence. More than that, I shall never take it away, even if all the world told me—even if I had some reason to believe—that you were not worthy of my trust. Oh, what does the world know of you? I understand you much better. Can't you see that a woman loves a man for what he is, and not for what he does?"
"What he does proceeds from what he is, Cynthia, I am afraid," said Hubert sadly.
"Not always. People are often betrayed into doing things that do not show their real nature at all," said the girl eagerly. "A man gives way to a sudden temptation—he strikes a blow—and the world calls him a ruffian and a murderer; or he takes what belongs to another because he is starving, and the world calls him a common thief. We cannot judge."
He had drawn away from her, and was resting his arm on the mantelpiece, and his head upon his arm. A strange vibration passed through his frame as he listened to her words.
"Do you think, then," he said at last, speaking with difficulty, and without raising his head, "that you could love a man that the world condemned, or would condemn, if they knew all—could you love a man who was an outcast, a felon, a—a murderer?"