"Oh, no, he knew nothing about it."
"It was a promise made before you came here?"
"Yes."
"Of which your mother—Lady Alice—approves?"
"Oh, yes—it was to her—because she——"
Lesley stammered and tried to explain. There was a tremendous oppression upon her, such as one feels sometimes in a nightmare dream. She longed to speak out, to clear herself in Maurice's eyes, and yet she could not frame a single intelligible sentence. It was as though she were afflicted with dumbness.
"I think," said Maurice, deliberately, "that your father and your aunt had a right to know this fact. You seem to have kept them in ignorance of it. And I have been led into a mistake. I can assure you, Miss Brooke, that if I had been aware of any previous promise—or—or engagement of yours, I should never have presumed to speak as I have spoken to-day. I can but apologize and withdraw."
Before Lesley could answer, he had taken his hat, bowed profoundly, and left the room.
And Lesley, with lips from which all color had faded, and hands pressed tightly together, watched him go, and stood for some minutes in dazed, despairing silence before she could say, even to herself, with a burst of hot and bitter tears,
"Oh, I did not mean him to think that. And now I cannot explain! What shall I do? What can I do to make him understand?"