"To shock me too suddenly!" she said, pausing in her work.
"It was my desire. Believe me, I am your friend, as I have ever been; make any call you like upon me, and you will not find me unwilling to respond. But to come down so low in the world, to lose one's all, to be suddenly beggared----"
He put his hand to his eyes, and watched slyly through his fingers. Her work dropped into her lap; her mouth trembled, but she did not speak.
"It might have been borne with resignation," he continued, "if one did not have a beloved child to care for and protect from the hardships of a cruel world. In your place I can imagine how it would affect me, how I should tremble at what is before me. Love is all-powerful, but there are circumstances in which it brings inexpressible grief to the heart. How shall I tell you? I cannot, I cannot!"
He rose from his chair, and paced the room with downcast head, but he kept his stealthy watch upon her face all the time. He was disconcerted that she did not speak, that she uttered no cry of alarm. He expected her to assist him through the scene he had acted to himself a dozen times. He had put words into her mouth, natural words which should by rights have been spoken in the broken periods of his revelation; but she sat quite silent, waiting for him to proceed.
"Still, it must be told, and should have been told before. I grieve to say that you have lost your fortune, and that, unless you have resources with which I am unacquainted--and with all my heart I hope you have--your future and the future of your dear child is totally unprovided for."
And having come to this termination, he threw himself into his chair with the air of a man whose own hopes and prospects were utterly blighted. She found her voice.
"How have I lost my fortune, sir?" she asked with dry lips. Her throat was parched, and her husky voice had a note of pain in it which satisfied him that he had succeeded in terrifying her. "You had the sole control of it."
"Alas, yes! How ardently do I wish that it had been in the control of another man, to whom you were indifferent, and who could have told you calmly what it shakes me to the soul to tell! I have also lost, but I can afford it; it is only a portion of my fortune that has gone down in wreck. I have still a competence left that makes me independent of the buffets of the world, that enables me to provide a home for those I love."
"I fail to understand you, sir," she said, glancing from the window at her child, who was walking on the lawn with Charlotte, and who, seeing her mother looking at her, smiled and kissed her hand to her. "You have not yet informed me how I have lost my fortune."