"To what purpose would all this be?" He had never heard her speak sullenly until now. "Better that he should part from me on this pretext than upon the ground which my farther confession would furnish."
She said the concluding words so indistinctly that Orrin did not catch their purport, or his rejoinder would have been different and less prompt.
"For the sake of your mother's memory!" he urged, gently. "The mother who, you are again persuaded, both knew and loved you."
She was still for a moment.
"You are right," she said then. "It would be base to screen my faithlessness at the expense of her reputation. I am cowardly—but indeed, indeed, it is not an easy task to undeceive him. He trusts me implicitly! If you had read his letters! And I do still value his esteem. I believed in him so long, you know. But I will tell him all! It is just that I should be spared no humiliation!"
To Wyllys this was sheer raving, yet it sounded dangerous.
"What do you mean?" he queried, in an altered tone.
Instead of replying, she hid her face in her hands—(how well he remembered the old action!)—and moaned.
He touched her shoulder, less in caress than admonition, as he asked, "Tell him what? Why do you speak of humiliation?"
"Because he still believes in me, I tell you! He will scorn me when I confess that my heart has changed—that I can never love him again, as I fancied I did once!" she whispered, as if ashamed to say it aloud. "He will cast me off—free me at once and forever."