Yes, she saw, and the color came to her face, and a proud, wounded look into her lovely eyes.
"And—and you thought that it was because I believed you to be a duke—and only because of that—that I——."
"Leslie, here on my knees I plead guilty. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself! But, dearest, think! The last words you spoke to Dolph the morning you parted with him! Think, was there not some slight excuse?"
She hung her head.
"It—it is all past now," she said at last with a deep sigh. "We cannot re-live it all! Ah, no!"
And she turned her face away as a tear rolled down her cheek. Before that tear he lost his self-command. He forgot Lady Eleanor, forgot that his wedding-day, as fixed, was within a few hours, and he caught her in his arms. She uttered a low cry, and bent away from him, her hands against his breast; but before the fire, the anguish of appeal, in his eyes her own fell; she trembled and quivered like an imprisoned bird, then felt herself crushed against his breast.
"Oh, my darling, my darling!" he murmured brokenly. "As if you and I could part again! No, no, never again while life lasts! Never again, dearest. Oh, don't cry!" He kissed the tears away, and laid her face against his lovingly, protectingly. "Don't cry, Leslie, or I shall think you can never forgive me! And——." He looked at the black dress. "Where is your father?"
"Oh, Yorke, Yorke!" she sobbed.
"Hush, hush! dearest! And you bore it all alone!" he groaned. "And I should have been by your side to help and comfort you! What shall I say, what shall I do, to prove my remorse? It was all my fault!"
"No, no," she responded, woman-like. "Not all, Yorke! I—I ought not to have believed that—that woman. I felt that she was not—not a good woman, and I ought not to have trusted her. But the portrait, Yorke! It all seemed so clear, so conclusive."