“I know,” he burst out suddenly, “that I—that you have not been treated well. You have been neglected, shamefully neglected. Of course you ought never to have come. It was a mistake, a caprice of temper on the part of—your father. Then when you came, of course you ought to have been sent back; it was cruel and wrong to keep you here. But by that time—you had brought—something, a ray of humanity, perhaps, or of sunshine, to—somebody, and so you stayed. And—and of course it was wrong, and somebody—is sorry.”
Freda, touched, breathless, was drinking in every word, with her great brown eyes fixed upon him. She flew up at the last words, and forgetting even her crutch, limped across to him and fell into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered, “but you should have said so, you should have told me! And then if you had wished me to live on here like this for a year, ten years, without ever even seeing your face, I would have done it gladly, if I had only known you cared, that it gave you one spark of comfort or satisfaction. Oh, you believe me, do you not?”
He could not help believing her, for truth and devotion were burning clear in her eyes. But it puzzled, it almost alarmed him.
“You—you are strangely, ridiculously sentimental,” he said, trying to laugh. “How did you come by all these high-flown notions?”
“Whatever I feel God put into my heart, when he sent me to you to make you happy again, as you were when my mother was alive.”
He half-pushed her away, with a sharply-drawn breath of pain; for she had touched the still sensitive place.
“Ah, child,” he said, “they have educated you on fairy tales. There is no going back to peace and happiness and innocence to men like me. The canker has eaten too deep.”
These words gave Freda a sudden chill, recalling to her unwilling mind the mysterious murder of Blewitt. She shuddered, but she did not draw away.
“Well,” said Crispin brusquely, “if you are frightened you can go away. I’m not detaining you.”