"In the years gone by, I--I--threw you up, Sara. While I loved you better than anything on earth, knowing that you were the only one upon it who could ever awaken the passion within me, did I live to centuries, I voluntarily resigned you. That night in the Abbey graveyard at Hallingham, when we accidentally met--you have not forgotten it--I told you that I could not marry you; that you were not fit to be my wife----Hush! it was equivalent to it Sara, how can I stand now before you and confess that I was altogether under an error; that in my pride, my blindness, I had taken up a false view of things, and was acting upon it? Can you see my shame, my repentance, as I say it to you?"
"I don't understand you," she gasped, utterly bewildered.
"Will you so far pardon me--will you so far trust me after all that has occurred--as to give me this one single word of explanation? To whom did you attribute the cause of my acting in the way I did? Whose ill-conduct was it, as you supposed, that had raised the barrier between us?"
She hesitated, not perhaps caring to reply.
"I have had an interview today with Captain Davenal," he resumed, in a low tone. "He has given me the details of the unhappy business he was drawn into--the forged bills: I am, so far, in his entire confidence. Will that help you to answer me?"
"It was that," she said.
"That alone?"
"That alone. There was nothing else."
"Well, Sara, can you believe me when I tell you that I never heard of that business until today?--That Captain Davenal had nothing whatever to do with my course of action?"
Indeed she looked as though she could not believe him. What else then? she asked. Who had? Under what impression had he acted?