"You are giving the very words they both used?"
"As well as I can remember; and I have cause for a good memory."
"Go on," she replied simply.
So I unrolled the whole chronicle of our unhappy fates, and even read to her Lucy Railton's letter which I had brought with me. Then, as I ceased, for full a minute we sat in absolute silence, reading each other's gaze.
"Let me see the letter," she said, and held out her hand for it.
I gave it to her. She read it slowly through and handed it back.
"Yes, it is my mother's letter," she said, slowly.
Then again silence fell upon us. I could hear the clock tick slowly on the mantelpiece, and the beating of my own heart that raced and outstripped it. That was all; until at length the slow, measured footfall of the timepiece grew maddening to hear; it seemed a symbol of the unrelenting doom pursuing us, and I longed to rise and break it to atoms.
I could stand it no longer.
"Claire, tell me that this will not—cannot alter you—that you are mine yet, as you were before."