“Last night? No.”
“That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours.”
“O poor Faith!” said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.
“Yes,” said Anthony, gravely. “We would have sent her home, but she has begged my mother to let her stay.”
“Were you there?—how did you know about it?—where was it?”
“Yes, I was there. It was in Underham,” said Anthony. He had spoken throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and said slowly, “I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know that it is proved—sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my friends—that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be. I can’t answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to explain exactly what did take place. Therefore, there is, of course, still room for doubt. At the same time David, before he died, poor fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so—you may take the evidence for what it is worth. You are the only person to whom I shall repeat it.”
Passionate tears sprang into Winifred’s eyes. This clearing of Anthony’s honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?—his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion.
“I am so thankful,” she said. “Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don’t want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,—for us all,” she added softly.
“Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun,” said poor Anthony. “Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?”
“How should it!—how should it!” she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. “O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?—are we not friends?—can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?” She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan.