“’Tis nothing,” she said, stifling her sobs.
“Miss Delia,” said Jerome Caryl, “I think it is a great deal.”
She suddenly broke down beyond concealment. “I think my heart is broken,” she whispered between passionate sobs “I think I am mad—oh,—I am ashamed!—ashamed!”
She struggled up, hiding her scarlet, tear-stained face.
“Think me mad,” she whispered through her fingers, “and forget—I am ashamed—and most unhappy—”
She leaned her forehead against the chimneypiece and sobbed afresh; her yellow skirt trailed in the dead ashes on the hearth, and from head to foot she shuddered.
Jerome Caryl was neither discomposed nor confused; he surveyed her agitation with a tender calmness and his strange melancholy smile deepened.
“I think we can make the Macdonalds take the oaths, Miss Delia,” he said, “as an old friend you will let me help you—in what I can?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with a half-wonder.
“What do you mean?” she whispered.