“Oh!” she said to herself, “what madness possessed me? Is it possible that I ever disgraced myself by loving Ambrose Meadowcroft?” She shuddered as the idea found its way to expression on her lips. The tears rolled slowly over her cheeks. “Don’t despise me, Mr. Lefrank!” she said, faintly.
I tried, honestly tried, to put the confession before her in its least unfavorable light.
“His resolution has given way,” I said. “He has done this, despairing of proving his innocence, in terror of the scaffold.”
She rose, with an angry stamp of her foot. She turned her face on me with the deep-red flush of shame in it, and the big tears glistening in her eyes.
“No more of him!” she said, sternly. “If he is not a murderer, what else is he? A liar and a coward! In which of his characters does he disgrace me most? I have done with him forever! I will never speak to him again!” She pushed me furiously away from her; advanced a few steps toward her own door; stopped, and came back to me. The generous nature of the girl spoke in her next words. “I am not ungrateful to you, friend Lefrank. A woman in my place is only a woman; and, when she is shamed as I am, she feels it very bitterly. Give me your hand! God bless you!”
She put my hand to her lips before I was aware of her, and kissed it, and ran back into her room.
I sat down on the place which she had occupied. She had looked at me for one moment when she kissed my hand. I forgot Ambrose and his confession; I forgot the coming trial; I forgot my professional duties and my English friends. There I sat, in a fool’s elysium of my own making, with absolutely nothing in my mind but the picture of Naomi’s face at the moment when she had last looked at me!
I have already mentioned that I was in love with her. I merely add this to satisfy you that I tell the truth.