"I am glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you," she said, removing her mask. "You sent me something to-day—"
"Yes—oh! you don't know how happy you have made me by wearing them," he said earnestly.
"Ah! yes," she started and looked down at the gloves; "they are beautiful—just the very thing for my dress, too. But that was not what I meant."
A deep flush burned his face under the mask. "I beg and implore you not to speak of anything else I sent," he said, in a low, tremulous voice. "Let me deceive myself into the belief that you acknowledge that, at least, as my rightful privilege."
She raised her lovely eyes to his with a puzzled expression, then dropped them, a little embarrassed. "We will not discuss that," she said, "but unfortunately I can not avoid speaking about the money, because—you see, I can not help knowing that you—that perhaps—that perhaps it honestly belongs to somebody else and you have no right to give it to me. There!" She looked apprehensively at him, fearing an outburst of rage, but he was quite calm, and the mask concealed any change of countenance.
"You are very scrupulous," he said coldly.
"Oh! I know you had no reason to expect honesty from me!" she exclaimed, with a touch of temper in her voice. "But when you threw your purse to me in the carriage, I had no opportunity of returning it and I never expected to see you again. Besides, you took mine and—and—" She glanced at him out of the tail of her eye, but he did not accept the challenge. "You think, perhaps," she went on, quite angrily now, "that I have done a much worse thing for money than ever you did; but if I have married a robber—"
"Stop, stop!" he said authoritatively. "If you must say these things about yourself, it shall not be to me. Insult me as much as you please, but do not accuse me of daring to blame you for anything you have done, or could do. Tell me, if I assure you that that money is my very own, will you take my word for it?"
She hesitated and softened. "Tell me truly—in what way your own? Do not fear to trust me."
"Trust you! Do you not know that you could charm any secrets of my own from me by a kind word? But this is no secret; it is the price of my birthright, received in honest sale and barter over a lawyer's table. You will believe me, won't you?"