He was speaking seriously now; his face was absolutely pale with emotion, and his eyes—the one fine feature of his face—were misty with a remembrance of old pain.
"Poor Tom," murmured Elizabeth, in her pitying way, always full of sympathy for the trouble of others, whatever her own might be; "poor, dear Tom, I know how hard it is."
"No; you can't know, Bessie; you can't have the least idea! You don't know what it is to have something to hide—to go about with a secret gnawing at your heart—never able to open your lips—suffering night and day—"
He stopped suddenly and looked at his cousin with wonder; she was leaning back in her chair, her face was pale as death, and her lips parted in a dreary sigh.
Tom drew close to her chair and bent over her, with a look of anxious surprise on his disturbed features.
"Are you sick, Bessie?" he asked.
"No, no," she answered, controlling herself.
His words brought up her own secret burden so vividly before her that for an instant she had been dreadfully shaken.
"You look so pale; I'm afraid you are going to be ill."
"Indeed, I am not," she answered.