“But Hugh is unworthy of you. Oh!”—at a quick gesture from her—“don’t misunderstand me. I love Hugh—love him still—always shall——” There was the ring of sincerity in his voice, and indeed, so far, he had said but the truth. “Day in and day out I go over it all in my mind, and at night, and try to find some possible loophole for hope, hope of his innocence. But there is none. And then the deserting! But I’d do anything for Hugh—anything. And I’d give all I have, or ever hope to have, to clear him. I shall always stick to him, if ever he comes back, and in my heart at least, if he doesn’t. But you—oh! Helen—to waste all your young years, spill all your thought and all your caring—I can’t endure that—for your own sake—if my love and my longing are nothing to you—I implore you—he has proved himself unworthy—acknowledged it even——”
“Daddy loved him—even when the trouble came—and I know he would want me to help him—if I could.”
“Helen,” Stephen said after a short pause, speaking in a low even voice (really he was managing himself splendidly—heroically), “you want to do everything that your father wished, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. You know that.”
“After Hugh left that night, Uncle Dick told me that it would make him happy to think that—some day—you and I would be married——”
The last words were almost a whisper, so gently he said them. But, for all his care, they stabbed her.
“Stephen!——” It was a cry and a protest.
The smooth voice went on, “He knew that I had always cared for you, and that you would be safe with me. He would have told you had he lived. He meant to——”
Never was wooing quieter. But the room pulsed about him, perhaps she felt it throb too, so intense and so true was his passion, so crying his longing.
“You have never told me this—before——” she began, not unmoved.