"Poor girl! poor child! I see, I see."
"But the accident that was almost your death saved her from that miserable folly and iniquity. Yes," she continued, in answer to the protest in his face, "folly and iniquity. I found her half crazed at your bedside. She was fully aware of your danger, but while she was feeling all the remorse that she ought to feel—that any one could feel—she was more and more convinced that she never had loved you and never should. I can give you no idea of her state of mind."
"Oh, you needn't! you needn't! Poor, poor child!"
"Yes, a child indeed. If it had not been for the pity I felt for her—But no matter about that. She saw at last that if your heroic devotion to her"—Colville did his best to hang his pillowed head for shame—"if your present danger did not awaken her to some such feeling for you as she had once imagined she had; if they both only increased her despair and self-abhorrence, then the case was indeed hopeless. She was simply distracted. I had to tear her away almost by force. She has had a narrow escape from brain-fever. And now I have come to implore, to demand"—Mrs. Graham, with all her poise and calm, was rising to the hysterical key—"her release from a fate that would be worse than death for such a girl. I mean marrying without the love of her whole soul. She esteems you, she respects you, she admires you, she likes you; but—" Mrs. Graham pressed her lips together, and her eyes shone.
"She is free," said Colville, and with the words a mighty load rolled from his heart. "There is no need to demand anything."
"I know."
"There hasn't been an hour, an instant, during—since I—we—spoke together that I wouldn't have released her if I could have known what you tell me now."
"Of course!—of course!"
"I have had my fears—my doubts; but whenever I approached the point I found no avenue by which we could reach a clearer understanding. I could not say much without seeming to seek for myself the release I was offering her."
"Naturally. And what added to her wretchedness was the suspicion at the bottom of all that she had somehow forced herself upon you—misunderstood you, and made you say and do things to spare her that you would not have done voluntarily." This was advanced tentatively. In the midst of his sophistications Colville had, as most of his sex have, a native, fatal, helpless truthfulness, which betrayed him at the most unexpected moments, and this must now have appeared in his countenance. The lady rose haughtily. She had apparently been considering him, but, after all, she must have been really considering her daughter. "If anything of the kind was the case," she said, "I will ask you to spare her the killing knowledge. It's quite enough for me to know it. And allow me to say, Mr. Colville, that it would have been far kinder in you—"