I had felt that nothing could induce me to confess what had passed; but the tenderness of her voice and manner broke me down. Her sudden presence made me acutely feel the need of sympathy. But my heart was too full for speech. I took her hand and bowing my head upon it wept. She did not speak whilst I sobbed, but soothingly caressed my hair with a touch soft and comforting as her daughter’s.
After awhile I grew composed, and then, with my face averted, I told her that the captain had sent for me after lunch, and I repeated to her the offer Mr. Harris had requested him to make to me. She listened attentively and on my ending exclaimed:
‘Well, my dear, it is a proposal of marriage as extraordinary in its manner of reaching you as the whole character of the man who made it. But what is there in it to cause you to fret and keep yourself locked up in this dark place?’
‘It affects me as a dreadful insult.’
‘But why? It is not meant as an insult. Captain Ladmore is not a man to suffer one of his officers to insult you through him.’
‘I cannot explain, Mrs. Lee. This offer of marriage has shocked me as though it had been some horrid outrage, and I do not know why.’
She sat silently regarding me.
‘But that is not all,’ I continued. ‘The loathing, the horror the offer has caused is too deep; I feel that it is too deep to be owing merely to the offer. Some sense lying in blackness within me has been shocked and outraged. But that is not all: the offer has made me feel how lonely I am, how utterly hopeless my future must be if my memory does not return to me.’
‘It is very strange,’ said she, ‘that you should feel that this extraordinary recoil as of loathing comes not from Mr. Harris himself as it were, but from his offer.’
‘You exactly express it,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is not the man but the offer which fills me with loathing.’