In one great wave the blood rushed over her face, and she held out her hand.
"Oh, Dr Dudley, forgive me!" she said.
"I want to," he said quite simply. "I have been far more to blame than you, but that is nothing. Tell me about it. Did our friendship mean nothing to you?—had I no claim upon your candour? Don't look out of the window; look me in the face."
"Dr Dudley," she said, "you are so quick, so clever, did you not see? My cousin had asked me not to say that I was a medical student, and I had promised faithfully to do as she wished. It never entered my mind at that time that I might want to tell any one down there, and—and—I did not know till that night at the fir-wood—— But I can't bear to have mysteries, even from my friends, and a dozen times I was going to ask her permission to tell you, but somehow I had not the courage. One morning, in the shop, after your first visit to Rachel, I wanted to tell you then, and risk her anger afterwards; but my heart beat so fast that I was ashamed to speak. Don't you see? It was one of those trifles that one thinks about, and thinks about, till one can't say or do them—like stopping to consider before jumping across an easy crevasse. And yet, let me say this one thing in my own defence. You can scarcely conceive how little opening you gave me, how absolutely you took me for granted."
An expression of infinite relief had come over his face while she was speaking; but now he winced and drew down his brows. "Don't!" he ejaculated gloomily. Then he shook himself. "I retract that 'Don't,'" he said. "You shall say what you please. Your touch is a great deal gentler than my boundless egotism deserves."
"It was not egotism," Mona said, recovering her self-possession in a moment, with a pretty toss of her head. "I will not be cheated out of the gracefullest compliment that ever was paid to me. I should have been dreadfully hurt if you had told me I was out of perspective."
"Your reading is the correct one," said Dudley gravely. "You are perfectly right."
But his own confession was still to make, and he was determined not to make it by halves.
"In the course of our acquaintance, Miss Maclean," he began somewhat stiltedly, "you have known me in the three-fold capacity of snob, fool, and child."
"In the course of our acquaintance," Mona interrupted hastily, "I have known you in the threefold capacity of teacher, friend, and——"