His lip quivered, and grasping blindly at the high back of the chair from which he had risen, he turned slightly aside in an effort to hide his failing self-control. The sight affected me even in the midst of the storm of personal feeling he had aroused within me by this astounding change of front. Stooping for the two documents lying on the floor between us, I handed them to him, then offered my arm to aid him in reseating himself. But I said nothing. Silence and silence only befitted such a moment.
He seemed to appreciate both the extent of my emotion and my reticence under it. It gave him the opportunity to regain his own poise. When I finally moved, as I involuntarily did at the loud striking of the clock, he spoke in his own quiet way which nevertheless carried with it so much authority.
“I have deceived you; not greatly, but to a certain necessary degree. You must forgive this and forget.” He did not say how he had deceived me and for months I did not know. “To-morrow we will talk as a present master confers with a future one. I am tired now, but I will listen if there is anything you want me to hear before you call in Clarke.”
Then I found voice. I must utter the one protest which the situation called for or despise myself forever. Turning softly about, I looked up at Orpha’s picture, never more beautiful in my eyes, never more potent in its influence than at this critical instant in our two lives.
Then addressing him while pointing to the picture, I said:
“Your goodness to me, and the trust you have avowed in me, is beyond all words. But Orpha! Still, Orpha! You say she must learn to love me. What if she cannot? I am lacking in many things; perhaps in the very thing she naturally would look for in the man she would accept as her husband.”
His lips took a firm line; never had he shown himself more the master of himself and of every one about him, than when he rejoined in a way to end the conversation:
“We will not talk of that. You are free to sound her mind when opportunity offers. But quietly, and with due consideration for Edgar, who will lose enough without too great humiliation to his pride. Now you may summon Clarke.”
I did so; and left thus for a little while to myself, strove to balance the wild instinctive joy making havoc in my breast, with fears just as instinctive that Orpha’s heart would never be won by me completely enough for me to benefit by the present wishes of her father. It was with the step of a guilty man I crept from the sight of Edgar’s door down to the floor below. At Orpha’s I paused a moment. I could hear her light step within, and listening, thought I heard her sigh.