“But it could not harm you to tell it,” I persisted: “it would ease your mind; and I should then know how to comfort you.”
She shook her head despondingly. “If you knew all, you, too, would blame me—perhaps even more than I deserve—though I have cruelly wronged you,” she added in a low murmur, as if she mused aloud.
“You, Helen? Impossible?”
“Yes, not willingly; for I did not know the strength and depth of your attachment. I thought—at least I endeavoured to think your regard for me was as cold and fraternal as you professed it to be.”
“Or as yours?”
“Or as mine—ought to have been—of such a light and selfish, superficial nature, that—”
“There, indeed, you wronged me.”
“I know I did; and, sometimes, I suspected it then; but I thought, upon the whole, there could be no great harm in leaving your fancies and your hopes to dream themselves to nothing—or flutter away to some more fitting object, while your friendly sympathies remained with me; but if I had known the depth of your regard, the generous, disinterested affection you seem to feel—”