“And now?” His tone was as low as hers, and when she made no answer he said, “First your words stabbed me, now it is your silence.”
She caught her breath and lifted and let fall her hand with a gesture of perplexity: a pathetic little sign of her distress.
“But you, too, are silent—still,” she murmured, after a pause.
“And I was so sure of you.” The softly spoken words stung her so that she winced at the implied reproach in them. The reproach was unmerited, and while repudiating the injustice she was both wistful and yet unwilling to let him see how his words hurt her.
“Why will you not speak and end the uncertainty?” she asked.
“For myself and for others I care nothing, as I say; but can you find no reason?”
“It is for me?” she cried quickly, with a swift glance and an involuntary thrill of delight. She had not doubted him; but the confirmation of her trust which seemed to come from the assurance that it was still for her he was acting thus, brought inexpressible comfort. If it was for her that he still ran the risks involved in maintaining silence, it could be for only one reason.
He had been acting a part, and yet not acting merely with her. The words he had spoken, the glances he had cast, the thousand little acts and signs he had given while she had deemed him her cousin, had expressed real feeling. He had not looked on her as unmaidenly, but—and as the thought grafted itself more firmly upon her faith in him, the colour came flooding again to her cheeks, but from such different causes, and her eyes glowed.
“I thought——” she said, about to give impulsive utterance to her new belief, when she checked herself, looked up with a smile of sweet confusion, and then again dropped her eyes.
Gerard had watched her closely trying to read the perplexing changes of her manner, fearing from her constraint and silence that she was angered; but gathered hope fast when she smiled.