Again he was silent.
“Answer me,” she cried imperiously.
“Did I not acknowledge it before,” he said calmly. “Mrs Hallam, have I committed so grave a social crime, that you speak to me like this?”
“It was cruel—to me—to my child,” she cried, indignantly. “You have kept us in a false position all these years. Man, can you not understand the degradation and shame I felt when I was enlightened here only an hour ago?”
He stood there silent again for a few moments, before speaking; and then took her hand.
“If I have done wrong,” he said, “forgive me. When that blow fell, and in your position, all the past seemed to come back—that day when in my boyish vanity I—”
“Oh! hush!” she cried.
“Nay, let me speak,” he said calmly. “I recalled that day when you bade me be friend and brother to you, and life seemed to be one blank despair. I remembered how I prayed for strength, and how that strength came, how I vowed that I would be friend and brother to you and yours; and when the time of tribulation came was my act so unbrotherly in your distress?”
She was silent.
“Millicent Hallam, do you think that I have not loved your child as tenderly as if she had been my own? Fate gave me money. Well, men, as a rule, spend their money in a way that affords them the most pleasure. I am only a weak man, and I have done the same.”