She lifted her head and looked up, not at him, but over the room. She went on as if she was reading her story off the wall. But she was reading it from Jinny’s eyes of scorn.
“You must know me as I really am before you—before to-morrow. I was engaged—once—before I knew you. He was a farmer’s son—Mr. Rudd. He thought—I thought—he gave me a ring. That was soon after I had gone to Misperton. I was twenty-two.”
He sat very still, hiding his face. It looked as if he were crouching from a storm. “Yes, yes, my child. Why not?” She was pitiless.
“Oh, but— . . . I have more to tell you.”
He seemed to shrivel. “You wish to speak of these things? You were very young.” And yet his voice said, Tell me all—all.
“At sixteen? Yes. Of course I was very foolish.”
“There had been—Before you went to Mr. Nunn’s—before you went to Misperton?”
She left his knee, and sat opposite to him upon a straight chair. She folded her hands in her lap and began her tale. As if she had been in the dock she rehearsed her poor tale. He neither stirred nor spoke.
She made no excuses, did not justify herself, nor accuse herself. She did not say—it never entered her head to say—You, too, have made mistakes. There was a Lady Diana for your bitterness. But she knew what she was doing only too well; and a force within her said, “Go on—spare nothing—go on. Whatever it cost you, be done with it. No peace for you else.” . . . “I must tell you that there was a gentleman—you will not ask me his name. I think that you know it. He gave me a book—and—other things. I have not seen him since—since you spoke to me at the school-feast.”
He stirred, but did not look up. “I will ask you not to see him.”