“And then—there are other things,” he continued. “He don’t know you were the boy Fannie spoke of in that letter; or that she gave you the plot of this land; or, more—far more to me!—that you took care of her till she died. All that must give him many a worried thought, ’Tana, that you never counted on, for he liked you—and yet all along he has been made to think wrong of you.” 351
“I know,” she assented. “He blamed me for—for a man being in my cabin that night, and I—I wanted him to—think well of me; but I could not tell him the truth, I was ashamed of it all my life. And the shame has got in my blood till I can’t change it. I want him to know, but I can’t tell him.”
“You don’t need to,” said a voice back of her, and she arose to see Overton standing in the door. “I did not mean to listen; but I stopped to look at the child, and I heard. I hope you are not sorry,” and he came over to her with outstretched hand.
She could not speak at first. She had dreamed of so many ways in which she would meet him—of what she would say to him; and now she stood before him without a word.
“Don’t be sorry, ’Tana,” he said, and tightened his hand over her own. “I honor you for what I heard just now. You were wrong not to tell me; I might have saved you some troubles.”
“I was ashamed—ashamed!” she said, and turned away.
“But it is not to me all this should be told,” he said, more coldly. “Max is the one to know; or, maybe, he does know.”
“He knows a little—not much. Seldon and Haydon recognized—Holly. So the family knew that, but no more.”
It was so hard for her to talk to him there, where Harris looked from one to the other expectantly.
And then the child slipped from the couch and came toddling into the light and to the girl.