"I tell you that you looked lovely—lovely! There you lay, calmly sleeping, with your life shadowed over by a false accusation!" Falling on his knees beside her chair, he caught her in his arms in an irresistible access of love. Could he suspect her—he, the champion of her innocence when everyone else forsook her?
His head, with its soft curls, lay against her neck. In a passing impulse of affection, begotten of the novel she had been reading, she bent down, kissed him, and stroked his hair.
"Be a good boy, and don't suffocate me quite," said she. "It is very hot to-night."
He did not lift his head, but still clasped her close.
"Elsa, my sweet," he said, "I am ashamed to look in your face. I feel a traitor; I have been thinking evil of you, my heart! I want to confess—to tell you of it. May I?"
"I"—yawn—"suppose so. Yes. But don't be long. I think I'll go to bed now."
"To think that I was mean enough, poor-spirited enough, in face of a few suspicious circumstances, to dream that my wife would break her word to me, would shatter my trust in her, by talking of my private affairs, of the secret which I gave her to guard——"
He felt the girl start in his arms, and a corresponding thrill, a sudden sense of horror, went through him. Letting her go out of his clasp, and lifting his eyes to her face, he saw her crimson from brow to chin.
"What made you say that, Leon?" she asked sharply.
"This," he said, as, scarcely knowing what he did, he laid the paper on her knee.