"Had you known," she cried, "had you known only yesterday that Cullen had come and had safely got him back, you would have been spared all you went through last night!"
"What I went through last night!" I exclaimed, passionately. "Oh, that is of small account to me, and I beg you not to suffer it to trouble your peace. But--I do not say had I known yesterday, I say had I been _told_ yesterday--I should have been spared a very bitter disappointment."
"I do not understand," she said, and again she put out her hand towards me and drew it in and stretched it out again with an appearance of distress to which even at that moment I felt myself softening. However, I took no heed of the hand. "In some way you blame me, but I do not understand."
"You would, perhaps, find it easier to understand if you were at the pains to remember that on the night I landed upon Tresco, I came over Castle Down and past the shed to Merchant's Point."
"Well?" and she spoke with more coldness, as though her pride made her stubborn in defiance. No doubt she was unaware that I was close to her that night. It remained for me to reveal that, and God knows I did it with no sense of triumph, but only a great sadness.
"As I stood in the darkness a little this side of the shed, a girl hurried down the hill from it. She was dressed in white, so that I could make no mistake. On the other hand, my dark coat very likely made me difficult to see. The girl passed me, and so closely that her frock brushed against my hand. Now, can you name the girl?"
She looked at me with the same stubbornness.
"On the other hand," said I, "I can. One circumstance enables me to be certain. I slipped on the grass that night, and catching hold of a bush of gorse pricked my hand."
"I pricked my hand a minute or two before the girl passed me. As I say, she brushed against my hand, which was bleeding, and the next day I saw the blood smirched upon a white frock--and who wore it, do you think?"
"Ah! Then you own it. You will own too that I have some cause of discontentment in that you have played with me, whose one thought was to serve you like an honest gentleman."
And at that the stubbornness, the growing resentment at my questions, died clean out of her face.