'Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges the engagement to be broken?'
She was mentally phrasing before she said: 'Absence.'
'He was here yesterday.'
All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sight drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment. 'Then I understand; it enlightens me.
My own mother!—my poor mother! he should have come to me. I was the guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer. That, if in life were direct retribution! but the very meaning of having a heart, is to suffer through others or for them.'
'You have soon seen that, dear girl,' said Dartrey.
'So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!' Nesta sighed; she took a sharp breath. 'You? do you blame me too?'
He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination and heavenly candour.
But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not be honourable advantage taken of the rival condemning; and he said: 'Blame? Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing. I've made mistakes, with no bad design. A good mother's view is not often wrong.'
'You pressed my hand,' she murmured.