Jessie never forgot it, or the interval of awful silence that succeeded Wyllys' unprecedented outbreak. Not daring to glance at his face, she had a second surprise, when he, at length, suggested, in a tone tranquil to coldness, that they should retrace their steps. Could she be dreaming now? Or were the strange, wild words echoing confusingly in her brain, dictated by her distempered fancy?
"It will be late before we reach home, as it is," Orrin offered, in support of his proposition. "And the air grows keener every moment."
Nothing more passed between them until they were again upon the bridge, where he stayed her, for a moment, that he might rearrange her furs.
"You are not used to this biting weather! Are you tolerably comfortable?" he asked, in his usual brotherly way.
"Quite comfortable—if you are not angry with me!" she answered, enboldened by the little attention and his tone.
"You silly child! I have never had a thought of you that bordered upon unkindness. We have both been hasty and unreasonable in judgment and in language, this afternoon. Your warmth was excusable. Mine was culpable weakness. You will hate me, in time, if I forget myself in this manner. It was selfish and wicked, besides being unmanly. Don't contradict me! I know what I am saying now, at any rate. To exchange an unpleasant for a painful subject—promise me that you will not allude to Miss Sanford's narrative in your letter to Roy."
"I shall write to him by to-morrow's mail, and tell him all!" said Jessie, with a return of stubbornness.
"You will regret it all your life! If he is guilty, he will be offended at your arraignment of him by letter, which must, of necessity, be formal and incomplete as to testimony—you having but one witness, and that by no means a reliable one. Should he be innocent, you inflict severe and needless pain; put yourself in the position of a touchy, suspicious, exacting fiancée, whose troth he will ever thereafter hold by a slight tenure. 'Let sleeping dogs lie,' is a sage motto, unless they can bark to some purpose. If you will allow me, I shall make it my business to sift this story carefully, and apprise you of the result—if I have to cultivate an intimacy with Miss Sanford in order to get at the truth. Meanwhile, we will depend upon what we are certain of—Roy's integrity and the nicety of his honor. At the risk of being again taken to task for special pleading, let me say that he is, in my estimation, as nearly faultless as mortals ever grow to be. You cannot act more rationally than to think as much as possible of him, and as little of his vaurien cousin as is consistent with common benevolence."
It was silvery-gray twilight out-of-doors when they gained Mrs. Baxter's door, and they found a rosy twilight of summer within her firelighted parlors, balmy, moreover, with the spiciness flowing out in the genial temperature, from the latest bouquet presented by Mr. Wyllys.
The donor, playfully gallant, and bent, it would seem, upon effacing the memory of his late excited speech, was chafing Jessie's numb fingers before the fire, and she laughing in spite of herself at his sallies, when Mrs. Baxter tripped in.