'Then you flatter me;' but she blushed, yes, to her sorrow, as Mildred rarely blushed.
'You see I am disposed to shelter myself beside it. Miss Lambert, I need not ask you—you know my trouble.'
'Your trouble? Oh yes; Arnold told me.'
'And you are sorry for me?'
'More than I can say,' and Mildred's voice trembled a little, and the tears came to her eyes. With a sort of impulse she stretched out her hand to him—that beautiful woman's hand he had so often admired.
'Thank you,' he returned, gratefully, and holding it in his. 'Miss Lambert, I feel you are my friend; that I dare speak to you. Will you give me your advice to-night, as though—as though you were my sister?'
'Can you doubt it?' in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. A slight, almost imperceptible shiver passed over her frame, but her mild glance still rested on his averted face; some subtle sadness that was not pain seemed creeping over her; somewhere there seemed a void opened, an empty space, filled with a dying light. Mildred never knew what ailed her at that moment, only, as she sat there with her hands once more folded in her lap, she thought again of the dark, sunless pool lying behind the gray rocks, and of the grewsome cavern, where the churned and seething waters worked their way to the light.
Somewhere from the distance Dr. Heriot's voice seemed to rouse her.
'You are so good and true yourself, that you inspire confidence. A man dare trust you with his dearest secret, and yet feel no dread of betrayal; you are so gentle and so unselfish, that others lay their burdens at your feet.'
'No, no—please don't praise me. I have done nothing—nothing—that any other woman would not have done,' returned Mildred, in a constrained tone. She shrank from this praise. Somehow it wounded her sensibility. He must talk of his trouble and not her, and then, perhaps, she would grow calm again, more like the wise, self-controlled Mildred he thought her.