And then for some minutes they stood looking bewildered and wonderingly at each other.
CHAPTER XXIII.
BAD MADE WORSE.
Sir Ronald came nearer to Lady Hermione; his face was white and stern, his eyes gleamed with an angry light.
“Let me ask you a plain question, Lady Hermione. Perhaps this conversation had been better left alone. Having commenced it, I must know more than you have said. You must not refuse to answer me. Either you are deceiving me now, or I have been tricked more foully than man ever was before. I must know which it is.”
“I am not deceiving you; why should I? Deceit is foreign to me; I abhor it. I repeat what I have said. It is possible that I may have addressed cards of invitation to you; but in my whole life I have never written to you one single letter.”
Looking into her pale, sweet face, where all truth, purity and goodness reigned, it was not possible to doubt her.
“Hermione,” he said, more gently, “you remember the evening of the ball?”
“Yes,” she said, sadly, “I remember it well.”
“We stood among the roses, you and I, the moon shining, the distant sound of music floating near us. You did not chide me when I kissed your lips, and I—oh, blind fool that I was!—I looked upon that kiss as a solemn betrothal.”
She shrank from the passionate tones of his voice, then looked at him.