“I don’t understand all your meaning. If I have hidden anything from you, it has been because I loved you so, and I feared—feared—to lose you.”
“Since you are not given to confidence, I want to ask you some plain questions. Have I your permission?”
“Yes,” she said, and there came over her face a weary resignation. “Say the harshest words you can; I will bear them!”
“There is a scandal in the air concerning you, Elfride; and I cannot even combat it without knowing definitely what it is. It may not refer to you entirely, or even at all.” Knight trifled in the very bitterness of his feeling. “In the time of the French Revolution, Pariseau, a ballet-master, was beheaded by mistake for Parisot, a captain of the King’s Guard. I wish there was another ‘E. Swancourt’ in the neighbourhood. Look at this.”
He handed her the letter she had written and left on the table at Mrs. Jethway’s. She looked over it vacantly.
“It is not so much as it seems!” she pleaded. “It seems wickedly deceptive to look at now, but it had a much more natural origin than you think. My sole wish was not to endanger our love. O Harry! that was all my idea. It was not much harm.”
“Yes, yes; but independently of the poor miserable creature’s remarks, it seems to imply—something wrong.”
“What remarks?”
“Those she wrote me—now torn to pieces. Elfride, DID you run away with a man you loved?—that was the damnable statement. Has such an accusation life in it—really, truly, Elfride?”
“Yes,” she whispered.