“You know nothing,” she said after a long pause. “I shall have to tell you everything. Perhaps you will feel that I have acted badly—disgracefully—without a sense of honour. I dare say I have—yes, I feel that I have behaved badly; but it was your fault. You came too soon. I tell you that indeed I had thought it all out, and made up my mind that I should be free from all blame.”
“Tell me all that is on your mind, my dearest,” said he. “You have already told me all that is on your heart.”
“It doesn’t matter what he may think—now, does it?” she cried.
“Nothing matters so long as we love each other,” he responded glibly and gladly.
“And it really isn’t much after all that I have to tell,” she said. “How I ever came to agree to his proposal, I cannot explain.”
“Whose proposal?”
“Whose?—Whose? Oh, you do not know even so much. Listen. Nearly a year ago I fancied that I was in love with Ernest Clifton. At any rate he told me that he was in love with me and I admired him so much for the way he had worked himself up from the humblest of positions—I suppose that’s the best explanation of the matter—I agreed to marry him, and he also persuaded me to keep my engagement secret from all the world: he knew that my father would not sanction it until at least he had a seat in Parliament. Well, it was kept a secret; but I gradually so came to see that I was acting wrongly—the whole business so weighed upon me that I was conscious of my whole character—my whole nature changing, and I insisted on his releasing me from my engagement.”
“And he did so? It would not matter to me whether he did so or not; but I suppose he was wise enough to do so.”
“After some time, and a letter or two, he said that he released me; and then—this was what made me angry—he said, ‘Between you and me there is no need for the formality of an engagement. I have implicit faith in you and I know that you have implicit faith in me. We can trust each other.’ Now don’t you see how despicably clever he was? Don’t you see that while he released me with one hand he was holding me to him with the other? Don’t you see that in listening to you here to-day—in admitting to you that it is you and none other whom I love, I have acted dishonestly—shamefully, if you insist on it.”
“I don’t insist on it. I am glad that I came here when I did, taking you by surprise. I see clearly that if I had not taken you by surprise I might never have had a chance of hearing the truth from you—the truth which has made a new man of me.”