"None whatever." This was given emphatically. Resentment at the perfect realization of her anticipated worldly indifference lent him force.
"Ruined?" she said.
"Yes."
"You I'll be more so than you were a month ago. I mean, you tell me nothing new, I have known it."
Amid the crush and hurry in his brain, caused by this strange communication, pressed the necessity to vindicate his honour.
"I give you the word of a gentleman, Lady Charlotte, that I came to you the first moment it has been made known to me. I never suspected it before this day."
"Nothing would prompt me to disbelieve that." She reached him her hand.
"You have known it!" he broke from a short silence.
"Yes—never mind how. I could not allude to it. Of course I had to wait till you took the initiative."
The impulse to think the best of what we are on the point of renouncing is spontaneous. If at the same time this object shall exhibit itself in altogether new, undreamt-of, glorious colours, others besides a sentimentalist might waver, and be in some danger of clutching it a little tenderly ere it is cast off.