She looked at him with a sudden dread in her eyes, a dread which gradually disappeared as he went on.
“But ever since we first met, I have loved you very dearly, though I did not know it at the beginning, and I have been true to that love.”
“Been true?” she murmured.
“Yes,” he said, earnestly; “there has been no other woman in the world for me since I saw you.”
There was truth in his accents, and the blood rose to her face as her heart throbbed with a joy which had long been absent from it.
“Not—not Ada?” she breathed, almost inaudibly.
“Not Ada,” he said, solemnly. “She passed out of my life when you entered it, Esmeralda.”
Her eyes closed, and a little tremor, born of her new joy, ran through her.
“I have enough to answer for,” he said, “without that. I have wronged you very deeply. I know now how innocent you were, how vilely I was blinded by my own jealousy, and the malice of a wicked woman.”
“You know?” she whispered.