“I would not if I could.”
“Then, don’t you see? Without indebtedness between us, no longer under any obligation to you, I have given you my forgiveness freely, frankly, and fully. Your offence, after all, was not really against me....”
“It was, it was,” he interrupted fiercely. “It was against you inasmuch as it was against my own honour. It made me unworthy.”
“Even so, you had my complete forgiveness from the moment that I came to know how cruelly you had been driven. Indeed, I think that I forgave you earlier, much earlier. My heart told me—my senses told me when you attempted to rescue me from the Duke of Buckingham—that some such tale of misfortune must lie behind your deed.”
A little flush came to stain the pallor which his illness had left upon his cheeks. He bowed his head.
“I bless you for those words. They will give me courage to face ... whatever may await me. I shall treasure the memory of them, and of your sweetness always.”
“But still you do not believe me!” she cried out. “Still you think that behind it all there are some dregs of ... of ... resentment in my heart!”
“No, no, Nan. I believe you.”
“And yet you will persist in going?”
“What else? You who know all now must see that there is no place for me in England.”