“Of course I have heard what people say.”
“If I were a wholly innocent man, how could any discoveries which might be made hurt me?”
“I don’t know; I should have thought perhaps they might.”
“I can see that your mind is not free from doubts?”
No answer. He was leaning against her, and speaking with difficulty.
“And yet you love me all the same?”
The question burst from his lips in a low, husky, passionate whisper, while his eyes sought hers, and his hand trembled at the contact with her fingers. For answer she flung her right arm round his neck, and pressed her lips tenderly, fervently on his pale forehead. He shivered in her arms as if seized by a strong convulsion of feeling; then, by a feverish effort tearing himself from her embrace, he leaned against the mantelpiece and buried his face in his hands, murmuring, in a hoarse and broken voice—
“God bless you! And God forgive me!”
Olivia’s whole heart went out to him in the deep distress from which he was evidently suffering. She rose, and coming to within a few paces of where he stood, said, most winningly—
“Come and lie down on the sofa. I will read to you, sing to you, do anything you would like done; but you must not stand; you are not well enough.”