“No; you are good and kind, as you have always been; but I can’t stay with you now—it wouldn’t be right—unless—unless you know all, and forgive me.”
When she said this it gave me quite a start. A hundred things came into my head. What had I to know, and to forgive when I knew it?
Without meaning it my manner changed, and I said, almost coldly, “What is it that I ought to know?”
“What I am,” she said, looking straight before her at the wall.” If my story were ever to come to you from some one else, after what you said that night, you might think worse of me than perhaps you will when you hear it from my own lips.”
“Mrs. Beckett, you’ve been very cross with me once or twice, when I’ve been late in on my nights out. Shall I tell you where I’d been, and what made me late?”
“Yes—if—if you think you ought to.”
“I had been to London to see my baby.”
“What—are you—are you—a married woman, then?”
“No! God help me, no!”