“No, I am sure he would not.”
“Why?”
“Because—because—Miss Carr, should you be angry with me if I told you the truth?”
She paused again, some minutes, before she replied softly, but in so strange a tone: “No, Antony. How could I?”
“Because, Miss Carr, I am sure he loves you: and he would think it lowered him in your eyes.”
She turned upon me a look that seemed hot with anger, but the next moment she had turned her face away, and I could see that her bosom was heaving with suppressed emotion.
A great struggle was evidently going on within her breast, and it was some time before she could master it. At last, however, she turned to me a face that was deadly pale, and there was something very stern in her looks as she said to me:
“Antony, we have been separated for a year, but can you speak to me with the same boyish truth and candour as of old, in the spirit taught you, my dear boy, by the father and mother you have lost?”
“Oh yes, Miss Carr,” I said frankly, as I laid my hand in hers, and looked in her beautiful eyes.
“Yes, Antony, you can,” she said softly. “Tell me, then, has Mr Hallett ever dared to say such a thing as—as that to you?”