In those sad days her heart was easily touched. She gave him her hand for the second time. He held it gently for a moment. Every day since they had parted she had been in his thoughts; she had become dearer to him than ever. He was too deeply affected to trust himself to answer. That silence pleaded for him as nothing had pleaded for him yet. In her secret self she remembered with wonder how she had received his confession in the school garden. It was a little hard on him, surely, to have forbidden him even to hope.
Conscious of her own weakness—even while giving way to it—she felt the necessity of turning his attention from herself. In some confusion, she pointed to a chair at her side, and spoke of his first visit, when he had left her letters at the door. Having confided to him all that she had discovered, and all that she had guessed, on that occasion, it was by an easy transition that she alluded next to the motive for his journey to the North.
“I thought it might be suspicion of Mrs. Rook,” she said. “Was I mistaken?”
“No; you were right.”
“They were serious suspicions, I suppose?”
“Certainly! I should not otherwise have devoted my holiday-time to clearing them up.”
“May I know what they were?”
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” he began.
“But you would rather not answer my question,” she interposed.
“I would rather hear you tell me if you have made any other guess.”