'And yet not quite all, I think. I shall have no secrets from you, Chris, not one. I believe I should have left soon afterwards, even if it had not been for my mother's letter, and for the discovery that uncle Bryan was my father.'
'For what reason, Jessie?'
'You do not suspect, then?'
'I have a dim suspicion, dear, but I would prefer you to tell me.'
'Chris,' she said, very seriously, 'you loved me too much.'
'That could not be, Jessie.'
'It could and can be. In your love for me you forgot some one else, a thousand million times better than I am, Chris.'
'My mother?'
'Your mother. I reproached myself every day and every night for being the cause of it. I was afraid that your attachment to that dearest angel on earth was growing weaker and weaker, and I knew that I was the cause of it. I saw the pain, the unutterable pain, my dear, that your neglect of your mother was causing her tender heart, and I was continually striving to discover in what way you could be 'brought to learn how much more pure and beautiful and sacred her love was than mine. If things had gone on in the same way, I should have run away as it was, Chris, so that you might have been forced to seek for comfort in the shelter of her love. Do you understand me, my dear? Your love for me made you colour-blind.'
How much dearer this confession made Jessie to me I need not describe.