"Lucy! You could think that! Of me!"
She put up her hands beseechingly. "Oh, forgive me, Karl; for the sake of the pain, forgive me! It has been killing me all the while. See how worn and thin I am."
He put his arm out and drew her to his side. "Go on, my dear. How did you pick up the notion?"
"It was Theresa." And now that the ice was broken, anxious to tell all and clear herself, Lucy described the past in full: the cruel anguish she had battled with, and her poor, ever-to-be renewed efforts to endure patiently, for his sake and for God's. Karl's arm involuntarily tightened around her.
"Why did you not speak to me of this at once, Lucy?" he asked, after a pause. "It would have cleared it up, you see."
"I did speak to you, Karl; and you seemed to understand me perfectly, and to accept it all as truth. You must remember your agitation, and how you begged me not to let it come to an exposure."
"But I thought you alluded to the trouble about my poor brother; that it was the fact of his being alive you had discovered and were resenting. That was the exposure I dreaded. And no wonder: for, if it had come, it would have sent him back to Portland Island."
Lucy wrung her hands. "What a miserable misapprehension it has been!--and how base and selfish and cruel I must have appeared to you! I wonder, Karl, you did not put me away from you for ever!"
"Will you go now?"
She knew it was asked in jest: she probably knew that neither would have parted from the other for the wealth of the world. And she nestled the least bit closer to him.