Jeff did not reply. He bowed his head and clasped his burned hands together. Miss Mayfield saw their raw surfaces, saw the ugly cut on his head, pitied him, but went on hastily, with both cheeks burning, to say, womanlike, what was then deepest in her heart:
“My brother-in-law told me your adventure; but I did not know until I entered this room that the gentleman I wished to help was one who had once rejected my assistance, who had misunderstood me, and cruelly insulted me! Oh, forgive me, Mr. Briggs” (Jeff had risen). “I did not mean THAT. But, Mr. Jeff—Jeff—oh!” (She had caught his tortured hand and had wrung a movement of pain from him.) “Oh, dear! what did I do now? But Mr. Jeff, after what has passed, after what you said to me when you went away, when you were at that dreadful place, Campville, when you were two months in Sacramento, you might—YOU OUGHT TO HAVE LET ME KNOW IT!”
Jeff turned. Her face, more beautiful than he had ever seen it, alive and eloquent with every thought that her woman's speech but half expressed, was very near his—so near, that under her honest eyes the wretched scales fell from his own, his self-wrought shackles crumbled away, and he dropped upon his knees at her feet as she sank into the chair he had quitted. Both his hands were grasped in her own.
“YOU went away, and I STAYED,” she said reflectively.
“I had no home, Miss Mayfield.”
“Nor had I. I had to buy this,” she said, with a delicious simplicity; “and bring a family here too,” she added, “in case YOU”—she stopped, with a slight color.
“Forgive me,” said Jeff, burying his face in her hands.
“Jeff.”
“Jessie.”
“Don't you think you were a LITTLE—just a little—mean?”