‘Laura!’ he cried, piteously.
‘But I fear I am not possessed of proper womanly pride; for I have forgiven you,’ she said, innocently.
‘My treasure! my delight!’
‘But it would have been so much easier to forgive if you had trusted me, if you had told me all the truth. Oh, John, husband and yet no husband, you have treated me very cruelly.’
Here she forgot her unreasoning joy at seeing him again, and suddenly remembered herself and her wrongs.
‘I know, love,’ he said, on his knees beside her, ‘I seem to have acted vilely, and yet, believe me, dearest, my sole motive was the desire to protect your interests.’
‘Your conduct has put me to shame before all mankind,’ urged Laura, meaning the village of Hazlehurst. ‘You have no right to approach me, no right to look me in the face. Have you not confessed in that cruel letter that you were not free to marry me, that you belong in some way to another woman?’
‘That other woman is dead. I am free as the air.’
‘What was she? your wife?’
There was a look of infinite pain in John Treverton’s face. His lips moved as if about to speak, but he was silent. There are some truths difficult of utterance; and it is not easy to all men to lie.