The girl saw the tension in his face, and stood silent, swayed by a whirl of confused sensations. She would not admit there was another reason, though something in her nature clamoured for a breaking down of the restraint between them. She had looked down on this man and wantonly wounded him, while he had shown her what she realised was a splendid generosity and borne her scorn in silence. It was once more his independent silence that troubled her, and she felt just then that she would sooner have had him compel her to acknowledge that he was not what she had striven to think him.
"Well," he said, a trifle sadly, "I suppose I must not expect too much."
The girl's heart smote her. She knew just what he wanted her to say, but she could not say it, and yet she meant to do all she had undertaken.
"There is a little more, and it must be said," she said. "I know part, at least, of what those men said of me."
She stopped, and, holding herself rigidly, though one hand which she had laid on the table quivered a little, looked at him steadily.
"If I could only prove them wrong, but I can't," she said.
A deep flush crept into Leland's face, and the veins rose swollen on his forehead, while he grasped her shoulder almost roughly.
"Do you know what you are saying?" he asked.
"That I married you because we were poor at Barrock-holme. It was a horrible wrong I did you—and you have made me ashamed."
The relief that swept into the man's face somewhat puzzled her, but she had seen the anger and suspense in it a moment earlier, and her heart throbbed painfully. After all, though she did not understand what had troubled him, it seemed that he did care very much indeed.