"Not a minor one. I have loved you as a son. I never loved you more, Percival, than when that letter of yours came to me at Cannes."
It was the first time she had alluded to it: the letter written the evening of his marriage. Val's face turned red, for his perfidy rose up before him in its full extent of shame.
"I don't care to speak of that," he whispered. "If you only knew what my humiliation has been!"
"Not of that, no; I don't know why I mentioned it. But I want you to speak of something else, Val. Over and over again has it been on my lips to ask it. What secret trouble is weighing you down?"
A far greater change, than the one called up by recollection and its shame, came over his face now. He did not speak; and Mrs. Ashton continued. She held his hands as he bent towards her.
"I have seen it all along. At first—I don't mind confessing it—I took it for granted that you were on bad terms with yourself on account of the past. I feared there was something wrong between you and your wife, and that you were regretting Anne. But I soon put that idea from me, to replace it with a graver one."
"What graver one?" he asked.
"Nay, I know not. I want you to tell me. Will you do so?"
He shook his head with an unmistakable gesture, unconsciously pressing her hands to pain.
"Why not?"