“I will not be insulted, Mr. Markham!” cried she, almost infuriated at my manner. “So you had better leave the house at once, if you came only for that.”
“I did not come to insult you: I came to hear your explanation.”
“And I tell you I won’t give it!” retorted she, pacing the room in a state of strong excitement, with her hands clasped tightly together, breathing short, and flashing fires of indignation from her eyes. “I will not condescend to explain myself to one that can make a jest of such horrible suspicions, and be so easily led to entertain them.”
“I do not make a jest of them, Mrs. Graham,” returned I, dropping at once my tone of taunting sarcasm. “I heartily wish I could find them a jesting matter. And as to being easily led to suspect, God only knows what a blind, incredulous fool I have hitherto been, perseveringly shutting my eyes and stopping my ears against everything that threatened to shake my confidence in you, till proof itself confounded my infatuation!”
“What proof, sir?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. You remember that evening when I was here last?”
“I do.”
“Even then you dropped some hints that might have opened the eyes of a wiser man; but they had no such effect upon me: I went on trusting and believing, hoping against hope, and adoring where I could not comprehend. It so happened, however, that after I left you I turned back—drawn by pure depth of sympathy and ardour of affection—not daring to intrude my presence openly upon you, but unable to resist the temptation of catching one glimpse through the window, just to see how you were: for I had left you apparently in great affliction, and I partly blamed my own want of forbearance and discretion as the cause of it. If I did wrong, love alone was my incentive, and the punishment was severe enough; for it was just as I had reached that tree, that you came out into the garden with your friend. Not choosing to show myself, under the circumstances, I stood still, in the shadow, till you had both passed by.”
“And how much of our conversation did you hear?”
“I heard quite enough, Helen. And it was well for me that I did hear it; for nothing less could have cured my infatuation. I always said and thought, that I would never believe a word against you, unless I heard it from your own lips. All the hints and affirmations of others I treated as malignant, baseless slanders; your own self-accusations I believed to be overstrained; and all that seemed unaccountable in your position I trusted that you could account for if you chose.”