"Would you care?" asks Cyril, going up to her and placing one arm gently round her; being unrepulsed, he gradually strengthens this arm with the other. "Would you?"
"I hardly know."
"Darling, don't be cruel. I was wrong, terribly, unpardonably wrong ever to doubt your sweet truth; but when one has stories perpetually dinned into one's ears, one naturally grows jealous of one's shadow, when one loves as I do."
"And pray, who told you all these stories?"
"Never mind."
"But I do mind," with an angry sob. "What! you are to hear lies of me, and to believe them, and I am not even to know who told you them! I do mind, and I insist on knowing."
"Surely it cannot signify now, when I tell you I don't believe them."
"It does signify, and I should be told. But indeed I need not ask," with exceeding bitterness; "I know. It was your brother, Sir Guy. He has always (why I know not) been a cruel enemy of mine."
"He only repeated what he heard. He is not to be blamed."
"It was he, then?" quickly. "But 'blamed'?—of course not; no one is in the wrong, I suppose, but poor me! I think, sir,"—tremulously,—"it would be better you should go home, and forget you ever knew any one so culpable as I am. I should be afraid to marry into a family that could so misjudge me as yours does. Go, and learn to forget me."