She turned pale as the words passed his lips, and, leaving her chair, knelt down at the table, so as to look up into his face, and to force him to look into hers.
“Why do you talk of it?” she asked. “We are not going to say good-by, at least not yet.”
“I thought—” he began.
“Yes?”
“I thought your friends were coming here—”
She eagerly interrupted him. “Do you think I would go away with anybody,” she said, “even with the dearest relation I have in the world, and leave you here, not knowing and not caring whether I ever saw you again? Oh, you don’t think that of me!” she exclaimed, with the passionate tears springing into her eyes—“I’m sure you don’t think that of me!”
“No,” he said; “I never have thought, I never can think, unjustly or unworthily of you.”
Before he could add another word she left the table as suddenly as she had approached it, and returned to her chair. He had unconsciously replied in terms that reminded her of the hard necessity which still remained unfulfilled—the necessity of telling him the story of the past. Not an idea of concealing that story from his knowledge crossed her mind. “Will he love me, when he knows the truth, as he loves me now?” That was her only thought as she tried to approach the subject in his presence without shrinking from it.
“Let us put my own feelings out of the question,” she said. “There is a reason for my not going away, unless I first have the assurance of seeing you again. You have a claim—the strongest claim of any one—to know how I came here, unknown to my friends, and how it was that you found me fallen so low.”
“I make no claim,” he said, hastily. “I wish to know nothing which distresses you to tell me.”