"Mary," John said, "it was in this place you promised to marry me. You was sitting on this stile—perhaps you don't remember?"
"Yours is a long memory, and mine a short one," Mary answered, after a minute of silence, while a little shivering wind rustled the upper branches of the yews. "It seems you have forgotten what happened yesterday."
"No, I've not forgotten. Nothing of the kind."
"You've found the child," Mary went on relentlessly, "and now you begin to see you were a bit hard on me. She's told you, I suppose, that however she got to the fair, it was no doing of mine."
"But why on earth didn't you tell me so yesterday?" cried John. He seized both her hands, but she drew them away from him instantly.
"None of that, if you please. You forget we've done with each other. And you forget how I tried to tell you and you wouldn't listen to a word. No, you'd never trust me again. No, you were sorry you ever did trust me. No, I'd deceived you and broke your heart."
"Mary, you're breaking it now," he said. "I was mad just then; I didn't know what I was saying. There, can't you forgive me? Let bygones be bygones. I'll never be happy without you."
"Oh yes, you will," Mary said. She stopped a moment and then went on hurriedly—"I never minded what my stepmother said, because I knew it was half of it spite, but many's the time she's mocked at me and said you thought ever so much more of that child than of me. I never believed it, I never troubled about such nonsense, not till yesterday."
"And you believed it then, did you?" said John, half to himself.
"Many's the time," Mary went on, "as I've stood up for you in the village, when people said you were just silly over that child and spoilt her down to the ground. I told them it was only natural you should think a lot of the little thing, when you'd saved her life, one may say, and she had no friends in the world but you and Mrs. Randal. Of course you couldn't help making a fuss of her—and you know as well as anybody that I've tried to help you with her, and behaved to her as kind as I could. I'm not saying this to praise myself, but just to put you in mind. It wasn't likely I should expect that losing Lily would take away your trust in me. Love and trust goes together, to my mind, John. You'd ought to have known for certain, whatever people said, as I had nothing to do with Lily's going to the fair. You ought as soon to have doubted yourself as me. But it seemed as if the losing of the child took away your senses; you had no thought nor understanding left for me. No love and no trust neither—and if you think I'm the girl to marry without them, and knowing all the time as something may come between us any day—that poor child or anything else as takes your fancy—why, you're mistaken, that's all. You say you were mad yesterday. I was in my right senses, and when I said it should be the last time, I meant it. So now you know."