“I suppose it was wrong to have helped Fanny when it came to a question of deception,” she said, “but you do not know how unkind and ungrateful it would have seemed of me to refuse. It looked such a little thing—just to say that it was I whom Mr. Meredith saw last night. And that was true. Oh, yes” (quickly), “I know that it is as bad to imply a falsehood as to tell it. But—but what could I do? I owe so much to my aunt!”
“I have no right to hold you to account,” said Kyrle. “Only let me ask if you think it possible to owe any debt of gratitude great enough to demand a sacrifice of integrity in payment?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, simply. “I am sorry if I have done anything very wrong, but I will tell you why I felt compelled to make almost any sacrifice to shield Fanny.” She hesitated a moment. It seemed a difficult subject to approach, and Kyrle was about to beg her not to distress herself in order to give him an explanation to which he had no claim, when she went on hastily: “You see, I am only partly an orphan. My father is dead, but my mother is living and has married again. She is very much under the influence of Major Joscelyn—that is my stepfather—and I have always felt, though perhaps I was wrong, that she does not care much about me. The Joscelyns have never liked me; so I was very unhappy at home, when Aunt Alice came and took me away. I can not tell you how different life was to me when I went to live with her and Fanny. They have both been so kind and affectionate, they have done so much for me, of whom no one else ever thought at all, that there is not anything—not anything,” repeated the passionate young voice, “that I would not do for them. And I can not regret what I have done, though I am sorry it seems to you so wrong.”
“It is chiefly wrong to yourself,” said Kyrle. “I wish I could make you see this as I do. It is not less than a crime against your future to allow people to suppose—for what one person knows, many people are pretty certain to know—that you were not only engaged in a love affair, but on the point of eloping with me last night.”
A deep blush, beautiful in its tint but painful in its intensity, spread over her face. She looked away from him and her lip trembled. He saw that some instinct which had been dormant before was waking in her, and making her understand the outrage which such a misconception would do her childlike youth, and he pressed his advantage remorselessly.
“You can not possibly comprehend what injury the story might do your life at some of its most critical moments,” he said; “but your aunt, Mrs. Berrien, will comprehend, and to her I shall go. I am deeply enough concerned in the matter to have a right to demand that the truth shall be told.”
“If you go to my aunt,” said Aimée, turning upon him quickly, “you can distress her very much, but you can not tell her anything which she does not know. All that you have said about possible injury to me she has said and I had much trouble in persuading her to let things be as they are. You must not think any wrong of her. She knew nothing until Percy Joscelyn, my stepbrother—who came in, you remember, this morning—charged her with not having taken proper care of me, because he found you in Mrs. Shreve’s sitting-room with me. It was like his effrontery to dare to speak so to her!” the girl interpolated, with flashing eyes. “Yesterday no Joscelyn of them all would have cared what became of me; only Aunt Alice cared. But to-day, because it seems they have learned that I am rich, Percy ventures to insult her!”
Nothing could have surprised Kyrle more than this sudden flash of indignant anger in one who had seemed to him gentle to a fault. But he was a man of quick perceptions, and all the intense affectionateness, the passionate gratitude and loyalty of the girl’s nature, were revealed to him in that moment of emotion. He was deeply touched and interested, for in this instant he understood that it was no vulgar love of intrigue, no lack of rectitude, no obtuseness toward the finest things of life, that had made Aimée play her part in Fanny Berrien’s commonplace comedy of flirtation. Instead of comedy it had become tragedy to the girl, with her keen sense of honor, her high standard of loyalty, and her delicate instinct of the claim which love and trust given create in a generous mind. But there were motives, deep-rooted in her nature, strong enough to make her do violence to all these things and stand firm as Fanny’s shield. Kyrle almost forgot the point he was himself intent upon in his interest in the springs of feeling and action thus laid bare before him.