Suddenly, long before he had expected her, the door opened, and Emily, pale as marble, with her eyes swollen with weeping, came into the library with a movement so unlike in its rapidity, her usual sumptuous and slow stateliness, that Harrington was startled. She came straight up to him with outstretched hands, her lips parted, the tears flowing from her eyes, and so agonized and desperate a look on her face, that it shocked him.
“John,” she gasped, seizing his hands convulsively, “hear me! Muriel told me you wanted to see me, but it is I that want to see you—to talk with you—to ask your compassion and forgiveness.”
“Emily!—what!—forgiveness!—my forgiveness!”—
She broke in upon his stammered words, wildly, almost fiercely.
“Hush? do not speak! Let me speak,” she cried. “Let me atone for my baseness to you by my self-degradation—my confession—my repentance”—
“Emily—Emily—silence!” cried Harrington, shocked beyond expression! “I cannot hear you speak of yourself so. Baseness? In you? Never! All the world would not make me believe it—you yourself”—
“John! hear me! hear me!” she wailed, her face agonized, and the wild tears streaming—“hear me, I implore you! I have deceived you. I have beguiled you. I have misled you—I have made you think I love you”—
“No, Emily, you have not. You have won my affection, but it is the affection of a brother who will be a brother to you forever. You have made me think you love me, but with the love of a friend and sister. No more.”
She dropped his hands, and receding a pace, looked at him with a hushed face, on which the tears lay wet, but ceased to flow. The solemn and fond avowal sank like dew on the burning passion of her brain. For a full minute she looked at him.
“Harrington!” she said slowly, in a deep still voice from which the tremor had gone. “Is it possible! Can this be so! My whole attitude to you—my court to you—my words, my looks, my actions—all that misled others—that made them think I loved you—that deceived them utterly.”