"You thought I laid aside a widow's weeds to challenge your avowal!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, in her icy, curt, soft tones.
"Oh, Leonora—for God's sake—put on it no interpretation except that I love you—I adore you; and I thought such hearty, whole-souled affection must awaken some interest, some response. I could hardly be silent except I so feared precipitancy. I spoke as soon as I might without rank offence."
Even then, in the presence of an agitation, a humiliation peculiarly keen to a man of his type, he was not first in Mrs. Gwynn's thoughts. She was reviewing the day and wondering if this connection between the lack of the widow's weeds and the presence of the Yankee officer was suggested to any of the sewing contingent. A vague gesture, a pause, a remembered facial expression, sudden, involuntary, at the sight of him and her,—all had a new interpretation in the sequence of this disclosure. They had thought it the equivalent of the acceptance of a new suitor, and the supposed favored lover had thought so himself!
The recollection of her woful married life, with its train of barbarities, and rancors, and terrors, both grotesque and horrible, that still tortured her present—the leisure moments of her laborious days—was bitterly brought to mind for a moment. That she, of all the women in the world—that she should be contemplating matrimony anew! She gave a light laugh that had in it so little mirth, was so little apposite to ridicule, that he did not feel it a fleer.
"You did not mean it, then?"
"Not for one moment."
"You did not have me in mind?"
"No—no—never at all!"
"Leonora—Mrs. Gwynn—this is like death to me—I—I—"
"I am very sorry—"