Was it death that he saw written there? All too surely conviction came home to him.
It was a more momentous interview than the one just over. Explaining he knew not how, explaining he knew not what, excepting that his love had never left her, Arthur Bohun knelt at her feet, and they mingled their tears together. For some minutes neither could understand the other: but elucidation came at last. Arthur told her that the wicked tale, the frightful treachery which had parted them was only a concocted fable on his mother's part, and then he found that Ellen had never known, never heard anything, about it.
"What then did you think was the matter with me?" he asked.
And she told him. She told him without reserve, now that she found how untrue it was: she thought he had given her up for another. Madam had informed her he was about to marry Miss Dallory.
He took in the full sense of what the words implied: the very abject light in which his conduct must have appeared to her. A groan burst from him: he covered his face to hide its shame and trouble.
"Ellen! Ellen! You could not have thought it of me."
"It was what I did think. How was I to think anything else? Your mother had said it."
"Heaven forgive her her sins!" he wailed, in his despair. "It was enough to kill you, Ellen. No wonder you look like this."
She was panting a little. Her breathing seemed very laboured.
"Pray Heaven I may be enabled to make it up to you when you are my wife. I will try hard, my darling."