"I begin to have a glimmering of why you brought her here."
"Kitty, tell me first. Do you not mind at all about Anthony?"
"Not in the way you mean. He never cared for me, not in that way. It is no use trying to bring these things about."
"It has been my dream, Kitty, since you were quite a little girl. I never loved Anthony; but if you were his wife, I think I should begin to love him. I thought you cared for him always."
"I should not have let you think that. Some of all this trouble is my fault. It is better to be open all the way through. I kept it from you because I feared the sharp disappointment it would be to you."
"That you did not love Anthony?"
"More than that, Auntie Janie, I loved someone else. I couldn't help it. I would have pleased you, if I could, but it did not seem to be in my hands. There is a fatality about such things. We might have cared for each other if we had not always known you wanted us to."
Lady Jane looked about her with a bewildered air, as though her world were crumbling.
"I have thought of it for so many years," she said at last, "that I cannot realise how, between you, you have destroyed the one solid hope of my life."
"I love you so much, Auntie Janie, that I think I would have married Anthony, without love, to please you, if there had not been someone else."