“She is alive—and well?” he asked, anxiously.
An inexplicable something in her manner warned him that all was not right.
“She is—or was, when I last heard news of her; we do not correspond. She does not live at Ridgeley now.”
There she stopped, before adding the apex to the nicely graduated climax.
“Not live with her brother! I do not understand.”
“Have you not heard of her marriage?”
“No!”
He did not reel or tremble, but she felt that the bolt had pierced a vital part, and wisely forbore to offer consolation he could not hear.
But when he would have parted with her at the door of her uncle's parlor, she saw how deadly pale he was, and put her hands into his, beseechingly.
“Come in! I cannot let you go until you have said that you forgive me!”