Mrs. Arkwright leant back on her chair and bit her lower lip.
“This is good-bye, then, and our friendship—six years long, isn't it?—is over. Had I known it was to be so short—well, we had not quarrelled.”
“Not over,” and he looked wistfully at her; “this life does not end all.”
“Ah, you have the old romantic faith, and one would like to share it, but no one knows; this life is the only certainty.”
“In a few hours,” he went on, “I shall know, and I expect to see my friend Jacob Arkwright, whom I loved, although we only knew one another for three years, and he... will ask for you.” Mrs. Arkwright regarded Egerton with amazement.
“He will ask how I kept my trust, and I... will be ashamed, unless you hear my confession and forgive me. For I... have sinned against you and your husband.”
“In what?” she asked, with a hard voice.
“God knows that I had no thought of you he might not have read while he was here. And afterwards for a year I was in heart your brother; and then—oh, how can I say it and look you in the face, who thought me a good and faithful minister of Christ?” and his eyes were large with pain and sorrow.
“Say it,” she whispered, “say it plain; you must,” and she stretched out her hand in commandment.
“I loved you as... a man loves a woman whom he would make his wife, till it came to pass that I made excuses to visit you, till I watched you on the street, till I longed for the touch of your hand, till I... oh, the sin and shame—thought of you in the service and... at my prayers; yet I had been left your guardian and had promised to be as a brother to you; besides, nor was this the least of my shame, you were rich.”