"So much the better. You and I, of all people in the world, must live apart. Was this what you had to say?"
"I thought you loved me," he rejoined, quite petrified at her words.
"I did love you; I do love you; if to avow it will do any good now. But this dreadful sorrow has placed a barrier between us."
There ensued a bitter pause. Robert Hunter was smarting with a sense of injustice.
"Mary Anne! Surely you are not laying on me the blame of that terrible calamity!"
"Listen, Robert," she returned. "I am not so unjust as to blame you for the actual calamity, but I cannot forget that you and I have been the cause of it."
"You!"
"Yes, I. When my father heard that I had invited you down, he came to me, and forbid me to let you come. I see now why. They did not want strangers in his house, who might see more than was expedient. He commanded me to write and stop you. I disobeyed; I thought papa spoke but in compliance with a whim of Richard's; and I would not write. Had I obeyed him, all this would have been spared. Again, when you and I told what the supervisor said, that there were smugglers abroad, my father ordered us, you especially, not to interfere. Had you observed his wishes to the letter, Cyril would have been alive now. These reflections haunt me continually; they will be mine for ever. No, Robert, you and I must live apart. If I were to marry you, I should expect Cyril to rise reproachfully before me on our wedding-day."
"Oh, Mary Anne! Believe me you see matters in a false light. If----"
"I will not discuss it," she peremptorily interrupted, "it would be of no avail, and I shudder while I speak. Spare me argument."