She looked up at him with a smile. "I am so glad, dear; so glad there is not to be the least shadow between you...."
"No," Amherst said, his voice flagging slightly. There was a pause, and then he went on with renewed emphasis: "Of course I made my point clear to him."
"Your point?"
"That I stand or fall by his judgment of you."
Oh, if he had but said it more tenderly! But he delivered it with the quiet resolution of a man who contends for an abstract principle of justice, and not for a passion grown into the fibres of his heart!
"You are generous too," she faltered, her voice trembling a little.
Amherst frowned; and she perceived that any hint, on her part, of recognizing the slightest change in their relations was still like pressure on a painful bruise.
"There is no need for such words between us," he said impatiently; "and Mr. Langhope's attitude," he added, with an effort at a lighter tone, "has made it unnecessary, thank heaven, that we should ever revert to the subject again."
He turned to his desk as he spoke, and plunged into perusal of the letters that had accumulated in his absence.