She looked at him with dilating eyes, her cheeks blanched with fear.
"Anna," he said, almost roughly, "if you have no confidence in me, I will go out of your life forever."
"Yes, yes, I believe in you," she said. "It isn't that, but it is the first thing I have ever kept from mother, and I would feel so much more comfortable if she knew."
"Baby. An' so de ittle baby must tell its muvver ev'yting," he mimicked her, till she felt ashamed of her good impulse—an impulse which if she had yielded to, it would have saved her from all the bitterness she was to know.
"And so you will do as I ask you, darling?"
"Yes."
"Do you promise?"
"Yes," and they sealed the bargain with a kiss.
"Dearest, I must be going. It would never do for Mrs. Tremont to see us together. I should forget and call you pet names, and then you would be sent supperless to bed, like the little girls in the story books."
"I suppose you must go," she said, regretfully.