The significant tone in which he spoke the last words brought surprise into her face. She turned toward him with astonished inquiry in her dark eyes, but, as she met his assured gaze, that expression quickly changed into one of understanding. It was evident that she knew what he meant. She looked at him steadily for a moment, a moment of inner effort in which she brought her own impulse of responsive feeling under firmer control, before she replied:
“Wouldn’t that be a barbarian sort of philosophy to live by?”
“Perhaps it would,” he admitted, paused an instant, and then went on with some heat:
“But when I think of all that you have suffered because of him, and how little he has tried to make amends, I am so indignant that merely refraining to be ‘grateful’ for such a crumb as this seems nothing to what he deserves.”
A faint color crept into her thin, pale cheeks as again she stared at him wide-eyed.
“I know all about it,” he continued, nodding at her gravely. “I know that you would have been as straight and strong as any girl, and a noble, capable, active woman, if he hadn’t pushed you off the limb of that apple-tree in your back yard twenty years ago, because he was determined to have your place.”
“Did he tell you about it?” she demanded, her voice trembling with excitement. “But he must have, because nobody else, not even father or mother, ever knew. They thought I fell.”
“Yes, I know that was the version he gave of the affair, and everybody accepted it. And you kept the truth to yourself.”
“What good would it have done to blame him after it was all over? And he didn’t intend to do it.”
“Yes, he did! He meant to push you off and get your place and show you that he was boss.”