“It was not my secret,” he pleaded.
“You should have trusted me.”
“But the captain had trusted ME.”
She looked at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old directness: “But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I should have told you.” She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. “I mean,” she said hesitatingly, “of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly, wisely—but I hate secrets! Oh, why cannot one be always frank?”
A wild idea seized Randolph. “But I have another secret—you have not guessed—and I have not dared to tell you. Do you wish me to be frank now?”
“Why not?” she said simply, but she did not look up.
Then he told her! But, strangest of all, in spite of his fears and convictions, it flowed easily and naturally as a part of his other secret, with an eloquence he had not dreamed of before. But when he told her of his late position and his prospects, she raised her eyes to his for the first time, yet without withdrawing her hand from his, and said reproachfully,—
“Yet but for THAT you would never have told me.”
“How could I?” he returned eagerly. “For but for THAT how could I help you to carry out YOUR trust? How could I devote myself to your plans, and enable you to carry them out without touching a dollar of that inheritance which you believe to be wrongfully yours?”
Then, with his old boyish enthusiasm, he sketched a glowing picture of their future: how they would keep the Dornton property intact until the captain was found and communicated with; and how they would cautiously collect all the information accessible to find him until such time as Randolph's fortunes would enable them both to go on a voyage of discovery after him. And in the midst of this prophetic forecast, which brought them so closely together that she was enabled to examine his watch chain, she said,—