"No--no!... You mustn't go to see him. You mustn't send a telegram. I can't allow that--you've misunderstood entirely. You mustn't tell anybody...."
They stared at each other with the same colorless faces, and again the rain became audible. In the man's too-confiding eyes, hope died hard.
"Not tell anybody? Why, I don't see ... There's no other way of making it right, I'm afraid.... And you have told me--"
"But I didn't tell you to tell anybody else. I didn't. I only meant to tell you, don't you see?..."
This subtlety was past the vision of the donator of the Dabney House. North, south, east, or west, he could see nothing but a seraph-faced girl whose misery it was to feel the penitential pangs, yet not be able quite to rise to the fulness of reparation. That she had reached for that fulness was to him the one thing certain in all the world. What want of delicacy in him had caused her to falter and look backward?...
Into the lucid gray of his eyes had come that look which more than once before Carlisle Heth had found intolerable. Little she recked for it now. Was not this the heart of her present dilemma, that she had already followed his ocular incitements too fatally far? By what religious prestidigitation he had trapped her secret from her must remain a thick mystery now. Nothing mattered but that he, having deceitfully seemed to agree that it was all a matter between herself and him, should not now turn and betray her.... Tell now? The sudden vista of scandal horrified her. How would she ever face mamma again? How would Hugo, whose bride and pride she was, regard her then?...
"Don't you see?" she said, with gathering tensity--"I--I meant it as a confidence to you. You mustn't dream of telling anybody else...."
"But neither you nor I own the truth. This belongs to Dalhousie...."
"Oh, it doesn't!--it doesn't! How can you! You misunderstand!--What I said to you gave you a totally wrong impression. He was entirely to blame for my upsetting. Entirely! He behaved abominably--and I--"
"Tell now!" cried the man, with his strange stern passion. "Once it's done, you'll always be glad. Don't you know you must, now! Don't you see you can't be happy, till you let the truth be known?..."