"I should have told you as soon as I knew it myself. But you were not with me. I was all by myself—in Carlisle gaol."
This reply, uttered with hypocritical meekness, went through Griffith like a knife. He turned white, and gasped for breath, but said nothing. He left her, with a deep groan, and never ventured to mention the matter again.
All he did in that direction was to redouble his attentions and solicitude for her health.
The relation between these two was now more anomalous than ever.
Even Father Francis, who had seen strange things in families, used to watch Mrs. Gaunt rise from table and walk heavily to the door, and her husband dart to it and open it obsequiously, and receive only a very formal reverence in return—and wonder how all this was to end.
However, under this icy surface, a change was gradually going on; and one afternoon, to his great surprise, Mrs. Gaunt's maid came to ask Griffith if he would come to Mrs. Gaunt's apartment.
He found her seated in her bay window, among her flowers. She seemed another woman all of a sudden, and smiled on him her exquisite smile of days gone by.
"Come, sit beside me," said she, "in this beautiful window that you have given me."
"Sit beside you, Kate," said Griffith; "nay, let me kneel at your knees; that is my place."
"As you will," said she, softly; and continued, in the same tone, "Now listen to me; you and I are two fools; we have been very happy together in days gone by; and we should both of us like to try again; but we neither of us know how to begin. You are afraid to tell me you love me and I am ashamed to own to you or anybody else that I love you, in spite of it all—I do, though."