Her tearful vehemence brought a wave of tenderness to his face, a quiver to his lips. Noting this, Larcher quickly intervened:
“In pity to a woman, don't you think you ought to tell her what you know? If there's no guilt on your part, the disclosure can't harm you. It will end her suspense, at least. She will be always unhappy till she knows.”
“She will grow out of that feeling,” said Turl, still watching her compassionately, as she dried her eyes and endeavored to regain her composure.
“No, she won't!” put in Edna Hill, warmly. “You don't know her. I must say, how any man with a spark of chivalry can sit there and refuse to divulge a few facts that would end a woman's torture of mind, which she's been undergoing for months, is too much for me!”
Turl, in manifest perturbation, still gazed at Florence. She fixed her eyes, out of which all threat had passed, pleadingly upon him.
“If you knew what it meant to me to grant your request,” said he, “you wouldn't make it.”
“It can't mean more to you than this uncertainty, this dark mystery, is to me,” said Florence, in a broken voice.
“It was Davenport's wish that the matter should remain the closest secret. You don't know how earnestly he wished that.”
“Surely Davenport's wishes can't be endangered through my knowledge of any secret,” Florence replied, with so much sad affection that Turl was again visibly moved. “But for the misunderstanding which kept us apart, he would not have had this secret from me. And to think!—he disappeared the very day Mr. Larcher was to enlighten him. It was cruel! And now you would keep from me the knowledge of what became of him. I have learned too well that fate is pitiless; and I find that men are no less so.”
Turl's face was a study, showing the play of various reflections. Finally his ideas seemed to be resolved. “Are we likely to be interrupted here?” he asked, in a tone of surrender.