"It doesn't matter now; not in the least now; and I can not tell you, indeed."
"But I wish very much you would. Perhaps, being in wretched ignorance, I shall be so unhappy as to do it again some day, and so make you hate me a second time."
"I didn't hate you."
"No? Yet there was a look in your eyes I wouldn't like to see there again. Do tell me, lest I once more fall into error."
"Oh, no," coloring deeply, as though at some unpleasant recollection. "That would be impossible. It could never happen again. I shall take care of that. I shall never as long as I live get into a—that is—I mean—I——Really I have forgiven it all now, so let us forget it too."
Though still greatly mystified, Mr. Desmond wisely forbears to press the point, something in her pretty distressed face and heightened color forbidding him.
"Very good," he says, pleasantly. "But there is another thing I have not forgotten. Have you ever cleared up that mystery about my uncle and your aunts?"
"Oh! that. It cannot be cleared, I am afraid it is too muddy a tale for any help; but I have at least found out all about it."
"Would it be indiscreet if I said I would give anything to be as wise as you on this subject? In other words, will you divulge the secret?"
"It is a story that doesn't redound to the honor and glory of your house," says Miss Beresford, stepping back from him with a gay little laugh, and glancing at him mischievously from under her big "Patience" hat. "If I were you I should shrink from hearing it."