“My dearest Garnet, what is the matter? Are you ill again?”
She turned her face, whitened and sharpened with anguish, upon him, gazed intently in his countenance, but said nothing for a full minute—then, as by a new and sudden impulse, she exclaimed:
“Hugh! I know my birth. Do you?”
Dr. Hutton dropped her hand, frowned, and compressed his lips.
Garnet’s features convulsed with a spasm of anguish, and she covered her face with her hands.
When Hugh Hutton saw that he dropped upon his knees at her side, removed her hands, and kissed her pallid brow, saying:
“I know that God created you a beautiful and high-souled woman. I know that by no act of your life have you ever marred His creation. I seek to know”—he broke forth with sudden energy—“I consent to know no more.”
“Hugh,” she said, looking at him piteously, “an evil covered up is not an evil cured. Hugh, this marriage must not go on.”
“Nettie, you are insane!”
“No, never more soberly, sadly sane than now.”