"Hermione!" he cried; "this trickster had only been a few months upon this continent when this crime was committed; and during those few months you gave me to understand that I was your dearest and only intimate friend. We were together constantly; we were looking forward to marriage. It cannot be possible that, at that same time, you contracted a friendship—shall I say an affection?—for this man? You spoke of him to me as a person whose pretensions you despised, whose slight acquaintance with your father you deplored; and, beyond this, you told me that you had never seen him. Am I to believe that, in spite of all this, he was your lover?"
"My lover!" She repeated the word with white lips, and remained gazing at him for some minutes as if paralyzed with surprise. Then with a gesture of that dignity which only a mind innocent in thought and act can command, she rose and turned away, with no further word, toward the staircase that led from the room.
"You know that is not true," cried Bertha to Alden fiercely. She stood up as a man would who was ready to make good the word with a blow. Then she called: "Hermione! Hermione! Come back. Don't you see that Mr. Alden has no choice but to give this Beardsley up to justice, and hand over all the evidence he has in these letters to the police?"
Hermione turned to Alden again. "Is that true? Do not deceive me in the hope of making me confess anything; but tell me truly, do not say you have no choice."
But he could not abandon the point which gave him such unbounded astonishment. "What motive have you for protecting him? Why do you love him?—for you do love him, Hermione."
"I am asking you whether it is no longer in my power to protect him, should I wish to do so."
"Oh, my dear; give me some notion why you want to save him."
The term of affection, if not used between them for the first time, was certainly now first used before others. A slow flush mantled her faded, sensitive face.
"Alas! Herbert, is it not clear now why I should have kept my secret from you, if your conscience is such that you can concede no mercy to a criminal? You may be right. You may have no choice but to wield the law, and the law only. But if I had a choice, you cannot blame me for not telling you, who admit you have none. Do you not know that I have loved you—you only? Do you think I could have endured to be separated from you for a slight or a low motive, for a whim, or for a duty about which I felt the slightest doubt? And nothing has taken away the need for my silence. I cannot tell you my motive, or give you any indication whether the clue you now hold is true or false, or whether these letters will help you to do justice or lead you astray, or why I went out to get them at night, or why I put them where Bertha would not have found them in the event of my death. I put these letters where I could find them should a certain contingency arise in my life, and where, failing that, they would be lost. I will not tell you more, or give you leave to use them."