'Miss Moxey, would anything be gained by our discussing my position? If you think it a mystery, hadn't we better leave it so?'
She made no answer.
'But perhaps,' he went on, 'you have told them—the Walworths and the Moorhouses—that I owe my friends an explanation? When I see them again, perhaps I shall be confronted with cold, questioning faces?'
'I haven't said a word that could injure you,' Marcella replied, with something of her usual self-possession, passing her eyes distantly over his face as she spoke.
'I knew the suggestion was unjust, when I made it.'
'Then why should you refuse me your confidence?'
She bent forward slightly, but with her eyes cast down. Tone and features intimated a sense of shame, due partly to the feeling that she offered complicity in deceit.
'What can I tell you more than you know?' said Godwin, coldly. 'I propose to become a clergyman, and I have acknowledged to you that my motive is ambition. As the matter concerns my conscience, that must rest with myself; I have spoken of it to no one. But you may depend upon it that I am prepared for every difficulty that may spring up. I knew, of course, that sooner or later some one would discover me here. Well, I have changed my opinions, that's all; who can demand more than that?'
Marcella answered in a tone of forced composure.
'You owe me no explanation at all. Yet we have known each other for a long time, and it pains me that—to be suddenly told that we are no more to each other than strangers.'