"Yes," he said. "Don't you recollect our talk at your house in London two years ago, soon after you came back from school? Do you remember what you then told me?"
She flushed slightly at the recollection. "I—I ought not to have said that," she exclaimed hurriedly. "I was only a girl then, and I—well, I didn't know."
"What you said has never passed my lips, dearest. Only, I ask you again to-day to tell me honestly and frankly whether your opinion of him has in any way changed. I mean whether you still believe what you then said."
She was silent for a few moments. Her lips twitched nervously, and her eyes stared blankly out of the window. "No, I repeat what—I—said —then," she answered in a strange hoarse voice.
"And only you yourself suspect the truth?"
"You are the only person to whom I have mentioned it, and I have been filled with regret ever since. I had no right to make the allegation, Walter. I should have kept my secret to myself."
"There was surely no harm in telling me, dearest," he exclaimed, still holding her hand, and looking fixedly into those clear-blue, fathomless eyes so very dear to him. "You know too well that I would never betray you."
"But if he knew—if that man ever knew," she cried, "he would avenge himself upon me! I know he would."
"But what have you to fear, little one?" he asked, surprised at the sudden change in her.
"You know how my mother hates me, how they all detest me—all except dear old dad, who is so terribly helpless, misled, defrauded, and tricked—as he daily is—by those about him."