"I do think," she said softly, "and I like you for your violence, Lord Vail. You are loyal; it is no bad thing to be loyal. But----" and she looked up at him, "but you must not think that I am a willing listener to gossip and old scandal that does not concern me."
"I do not think that," cried Harry. "Indeed, I never thought that."
His words rang out and died on the hot air, and still the girl made no answer. This way and that was her mind divided: should she tell him all, should she tell him nothing? The latter was the easier path, for his last words had the ring of truth in them, convincing, unmistakable, and she, so to speak, was acquitted without a stain on her character, did she decide not to speak. But something within her, intangible and imperative, urged other counsels. Her reason gave her no account of these, but simple instinct only called to her. What prompted that instinct, from what deep and vital source it rose, she did not pause to consider. Simply, it was there, with reason warring on the other side. The battle was brief and momentous. Immediately, almost, she spoke.
"I am sure you never thought that," she said, "but I wish"--and her pulse ticked full and rapid--"I wish to prove to you how it was not through gossip that the knowledge came to me, for this is how I heard it: My mother was Harold Harmsworth's mother."
Harold drew a long breath which hung suspended in his lungs. His eye was fixed on the eyes of the girl in a long glance of sheer astonishment, and hers were not withdrawn. At last--
"God forgive us all!" he said. "And do you forgive me?"
Evie got up quickly, with a glowing face.
"Forgive you? What is there for which I can forgive you, Lord Vail?" she said. "And I honour you for your championship of your kinsman, who has suffered, as I believe, unmeritedly and most cruelly," and her heart spoke the words which her lips framed.
They walked back in silence toward the house, for to each the moment was too good to spoil by further speech, and the silence was spontaneous and desired, the distance of the poles away from awkwardness. To Harry, at any rate, it seemed too precious to risk of it the loss of a moment; he would not have opened his lips, except that one word should issue therefrom, for all his Luck could bring him, and that word he dared not utter yet; he scarcely even knew if, so to speak, it was there yet. And in Evie the triumph of her just speech over a more conventional reticence filled her with a deep and secret joy. She ought to have said what she had said, she could have said no less, and she felt it in every beat and leaping pulse of her body. The recognised and proper reserve of a girl to a young man meant to her at that moment less than nothing; her words, she knew, had put her on to a new and more intimate footing with him, but she could not have spoken otherwise, or have spoken not at all. She had said what was due from one human being, be he boy or girl, or man or woman, to another human being, king or peasant. She had said no more than she need, but, humanly speaking, she could not have said less. The thing had been well done.