"Yes, I paid it. Oh, Sydney, it was a little thing to do! If only you had told me months ago!"
Her eyes brimmed over with tears at last. She had been smarting under a sense of terrible humiliation ever since Mr. Copley's visit, but hitherto she had not wept. Now, when her husband took her in his arms and looked into her eyes, the pain at her heart was somewhat assuaged, although the tears fell swiftly down her pale cheeks.
"Nan, I never dreamed that I should find your kindness so bitter to me," Sydney said.
He was profoundly moved by her gentleness and by her generosity alike. But inasmuch as it requires more generosity of nature to accept a gift nobly than to make it, he felt himself shamed in her eyes, and his wife was in her turn pained by the consciousness of his shame.
"Why should you be afraid to trust me?" she said. "All that concerns you concerns me as well; and I am only setting myself free from trouble and anxiety if I do anything for you. Don't you understand? And as far as my money is concerned, you know very well that if it had not been for John and those tiresome lawyers, you should have had it all and spent it, if you chose, without the slightest reference to me. What grieves me, dearest, is that you should have been suffering without taking me into your confidence."
"I ought to have done so," said Sydney, rather reluctantly, "but I felt as if I could not tell you all these paltry, sordid details. You might have thought——"
Then he paused, and the color rose darkly in his face.
"I should have thought nothing but what was honorable to you," said Nan, throwing back her graceful head with a gesture of natural pride and indignation.
"And now you think the worse of me?"
"No, no!" she cried, stealing one arm round his neck, "I think nothing bad of you—nothing! Only you will trust me, now, Sydney? You will not hide things from me again?"