'You will give me your word,' she pursued, 'never to speak of this correspondence to Herr Bela or to any of the children.'
Greswold bowed his assent. 'My lord has forbidden me also,' he said eagerly.
Her brows contracted.
'You have committed an imprudence,' she said, in a tone which chilled the old man to the marrow. 'Be heedful that no one knows of it.'
She said no more; took the volume she had needed, and quitted the room.
'Who shall tell the heart of a woman?' thought Greswold, left to himself. 'She knows not whether the man she once adored be living or dead, and she does not put to me one single question, does not even seek to learn where he dwells or what he does! What could his sin be to sweep all love away as fire makes a desert of a smiling meadow? And be it what it would, of what use is human love if it have not enough of the divine love in it to rejoice over the sinner who repents?'
He knew not that the sin she might, she would, have forgiven, but that the shame ate into the fair marble of her honour like a corroding acid.
From that time he expected daily some fresh question, some allusion at least to the confession which she had surprised from him. But she never spoke to him again of it. If she placed a violent control upon herself, because she did not think it fitting to speak of her husband to one in her employ, or if her husband were absolutely dead to her memory and her affections, he could not tell. He only knew that by no word or sign did she appear to recall the brief conversation which had passed between them.
Although what he had done was innocent enough, the old physician, in his scrupulous sense of duty, began to have a sense of guilt. Had he any right to retain any hidden knowledge from the mistress whose roof sheltered him, and whose bread he ate?
But his loyalty to his pledged word, and to him whom the world of men still called Sabran, obliged him to be mute.