And yet, within, my heart was hot, and it was out of the heat of it that I spoke. Shall I write down what I spoke? I can hardly bear to do it. Even after all these years, when fate, kinder than her wont, has helped me to bury all that spoiled past, and to begin a future upon the grave of it that has its foundations deeper still. Even now I am afraid to look at the stern record of my words in black and white before me. I am ashamed—not of my love, but of my selfishness, though these pages are for no other eyes than mine, I am afraid. But I have set myself the task, and it shall be accomplished to the end.
"Can't you understand," said I, in a low voice, "that perhaps I cannot love the squire because I love somebody else better?"
He was silent—he did not even look at me. He gave no sign of being surprised at my revelation.
"Are you sure of that?" he said, after a pause. "And is he as worthy of you as Squire Broderick?"
"Worthy!" echoed I. For a moment a proud, rebellious answer flashed through my mind. Was he worthy of me—he who gave so much the less, for mine that was so much the more? But I trod the demon out of sight. Was he to blame if I gave the more? "What is worthiness?" asked I.
He did not reply at first, and then it was in a voice that somehow seemed to me different to any I had heard him use before.
"I don't know that there's any such thing," he said, with a sort of grim seriousness. "But a man can give the best he has, and I don't think a woman should put up with less."
Queer, plain words; there was nothing in them to hurt me, and yet they seemed to fly at me. My heart beat wildly; I could feel it, I could hear it, fluttering like a caged bird against the hard-wood of the fence against which I leaned.
"The squire gives you the best he has," said Trayton Harrod. "Does the man you think you love do as much?"