“I will tell you honestly. It was hers entirely, entirely.”
“What was her reason?”
“I can hardly say. But I’ll tell the story without reserve.”
Stephen until to-day had unhesitatingly held that she grew tired of him and turned to Knight; but he did not like to advance the statement now, or even to think the thought. To fancy otherwise accorded better with the hope to which Knight’s estrangement had given birth: that love for his friend was not the direct cause, but a result of her suspension of love for himself.
“Such a matter must not be allowed to breed discord between us,” Knight returned, relapsing into a manner which concealed all his true feeling, as if confidence now was intolerable. “I do see that your reticence towards me in the vault may have been dictated by prudential considerations.” He concluded artificially, “It was a strange thing altogether; but not of much importance, I suppose, at this distance of time; and it does not concern me now, though I don’t mind hearing your story.”
These words from Knight, uttered with such an air of renunciation and apparent indifference, prompted Smith to speak on—perhaps with a little complacency—of his old secret engagement to Elfride. He told the details of its origin, and the peremptory words and actions of her father to extinguish their love.
Knight persevered in the tone and manner of a disinterested outsider. It had become more than ever imperative to screen his emotions from Stephen’s eye; the young man would otherwise be less frank, and their meeting would be again embittered. What was the use of untoward candour?
Stephen had now arrived at the point in his ingenuous narrative where he left the vicarage because of her father’s manner. Knight’s interest increased. Their love seemed so innocent and childlike thus far.
“It is a nice point in casuistry,” he observed, “to decide whether you were culpable or not in not telling Swancourt that your friends were parishioners of his. It was only human nature to hold your tongue under the circumstances. Well, what was the result of your dismissal by him?”
“That we agreed to be secretly faithful. And to insure this we thought we would marry.”