"Well, what's the matter?" she cries. "Has the bank broke, or has Worth failed, or—— Why, Keith," (with sudden gravity), "are you ill?"
Her voice seems to recall his senses. He sits down and looks sadly at the radiant little figure.
"Nan," he says brokenly, "I—I have come to say that I have behaved to you like a cad, a brute. I have no excuse to offer. I can only tell you the plain truth, and that is——"
"Stop!" she cries suddenly; and all her airs and affectations seem to fall off her, leaving only a quiet, pale-faced little maiden, whose big, bright eyes are clouded and sad. "I know what you mean. You don't love me. It is not what comes to me, Keith, only I thought I might help to console you, being so fond of you as I was, for—she—can be nothing to you after all."
"You—you know——" stammers Keith.
"Know, of course I know," she answers, with pretty contempt. "Do you think I was reared in Boston and can't see a little bit through a stone wall, specially when that stone wall has some mighty big chinks to let the daylight in? Know—why, who doesn't know that's ever seen you and 'my Lady Lauraine' together?"
The colour mounts to Keith's brow. "And I have done her all this harm," he thinks. "Don't be afraid to speak out to me," continues Nan. "I'm too fond of you to be cross, and I know you've tried your best to be true to me. We'd best forget that we ever thought of being more than friends. Don't you trouble to explain. If you hadn't said this, I should have done so before it came to the real business. I don't want to marry a man whose heart is set on another woman, and you loved her before you knew me—didn't you?"
"Yes," he says quickly. "Since we were boy and girl together."
"And why did she jilt you?" asked Dresden China tranquilly. Her heart is so full, and pained, and angry, that she is afraid of betraying herself.
"She was forced into marrying another man during my absence," says Keith coldly. "I was forbidden to write, and when I trusted—well, it was her mother—to tell her about myself—my changed fortunes—she never did. When I came back from New York she was married."