"Mr. Lacy!" ejaculated Ida, astonished. "But no! you knew us too well? did Lynn never tell you—" she stopped.
"No, I first heard of your engagement from a third person; you confirmed it, subsequently."
"What do you mean? you are under a strange misapprehension. I never was betrothed to Lynn; he never thought of me but as a friend."
"Ida!" his tone was stern. "What are you saying? Have you forgotten the night you left my side for his, upon seeing his dejection—the long promenade, and his reproaches for what he deemed—wrongfully, as I am now assured—was coquetry in you? I was told then, what I had heard, without heeding before, that you were plighted lovers. So confirmed was I in my disbelief that I would have declared it, in defiance of the proofs presented to me, had I not overheard by accident a portion of your conversation. He said—(I remember it well!)—'I have loved you as man never loved woman before—have believed you pure and high-minded. If I thought that the despicable coquetry you hint at, had caused you to insist upon the concealment of our engagement—' I lost the rest. Is not this enough? must I harrow your feelings by recurring to your appeal to me to save him from crime and death for your sake;—or to the awful hour when you were summoned to receive his last sigh? Oh! Ida! Ida! I have trusted in your truth—do not shake my faith now!"
There was bewilderment, but not falsehood in the eyes that sustained his rebuking glance. "I have spoken the truth. The sentence which misled you, was the repetition of a remark made to another;—the whisper in his dying hour, a message to the same. To me—I repeat—he was a brother, devoted and true to the last—but nothing more."
His lips were ashy white;—his self-command had utterly deserted him.
"I have been terribly deceived!" he said, rising and pacing the floor. "Ida!" he resumed, coming back to her side, "we have spoken of the mysterious dealings of Providence. I did not think my trust would be tested so soon. You have unwittingly awakened a pain, I thought was stilled forever, and justice to you, and to myself, requires me to endure it yet awhile longer. We are friends—we can never be anything nearer—but if I were the husband, instead of the betrothed of another, I should feel bound to clear my honor from the aspersion my conduct has cast upon it. My actions—my language, must have convinced you that I loved you;—you were ignorant of the mistake into which I had fallen—what interpretation have you put upon my course, since? You did not misconstrue my attentions then—tell me—am I a knave—a hypocrite in your sight?"
"Never!" said she, lifting a face, as pale as his own. "My confidence in your friendship and integrity has not swerved, and there lives not one who will pray for your happiness with more sincerity; who is more thankful for your noble renunciation of personal feeling to advance her welfare. We are friends! we will forget everything but this."
She was standing before him; and while speaking, laid her hand in his. He gazed silently into the countenance, so elevated in its look of heroic self-devotion.