A moment’s silence ensued, and then you spoke again: “Perhaps there was a motive that explains it. Please don’t reply, if it is a question I ought not to put, but after your confidence of last week I feel as if you had given me the privilege to ask it. I have always thought—or rather hoped—that you cared for Agnes? If”—
“And so you married me to her in the novel,” I interrupted, in an effort to change the subject, dreading to what it might lead.
You laughed merrily as you said, “Oh, I’m so glad you spoke of that. I have often wondered if you recognized the attempted portrait,—which now I know is not a bit of a likeness,—and have longed to ask you. I never should have dared to sketch it, but I thought my pen name would conceal my criminality; and then what a fatality for you to read it! I never suspected you were the publisher’s reader. What have you thought of me?”
“That you drew a very pleasant picture of my supposed mental and moral attainments, at the expense of my ambition and will. My true sympathy, however, went out to the girl whom you offered up as a heart-restorer for my earlier attachment.”
“I’m thankful we are in the shadow,” you laughed, “so that my red cheeks don’t show. You are taking a most thoroughgoing revenge.”
“That was the last thought in my mind.”
“Then, my woman’s curiosity having been appeased, be doubly generous and spare my absurd blushes. I don’t know when I have been made to feel so young and foolish.”
“Clearly you are no hardened criminal, Miss Walton. Usually matchmakers glory in their shame.”
“Perhaps I should if I had not been detected, or if I had succeeded better.”
“You took, I fear, a difficult subject for what may truly be called your maiden experiment.”