“What are you in trouble about? Tell me of it,” said Dick earnestly. “Darling, I will share it with ’ee and help ’ee.”
“No, no: you can’t! Nobody can!”
“Why not? You don’t deserve it, whatever it is. Tell me, dear.”
“O, it isn’t what you think! It is dreadful: my own sin!”
“Sin, Fancy! as if you could sin! I know it can’t be.”
“’Tis, ’tis!” said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow. “I have done wrong, and I don’t like to tell it! Nobody will forgive me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . . I have allowed myself to—to—fl—”
“What,—not flirt!” he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a sudden pressure inward from his surface. “And you said only the day before yesterday that you hadn’t flirted in your life!”
“Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story! I have let another love me, and—”
“Good G—! Well, I’ll forgive you,—yes, if you couldn’t help it,—yes, I will!” said the now dismal Dick. “Did you encourage him?”
“O,—I don’t know,—yes—no. O, I think so!”