"Yes; but I am equally sure that anything that concerns you _is_ of import to me. To whom should you tell anything, if not to me? I do not like concealment, Beatrice."
His tone was grave; indeed, too much like reproof to a fractious child to suit Beatrice's pride. She drew away from him.
"Nor I. You must think but meanly of me if you can impute anything like concealment to me."
"How can I do otherwise? You tell me you have been annoyed, and refuse to say how, and by whom. Is that anything but concealment? If any one has offended or insulted you, I ought to be the first you came to. A woman, Beatrice, should have nothing hidden from the man who is, or will be, her husband."
She threw her arms around him. Her moods were variable as a child's. Perhaps this very variability Earlscourt hardly understood, for it was utterly opposed to his own character: you always found him the same; _she_ would be all storm one moment, all sunshine the next.
"Do you suppose I would hide anything from you? Do you think for a moment I would hold back anything you had a right to know? You might look into my heart; there would be no thought or feeling there I should wish to keep from you. But if you exact confidence, so do I. Would you think of taking as your wife one you could not trust?"
"No; if I once ceased to believe in your truth or honor, as I believe in my own, I should part from you forever, though God knows what it would cost me!"
"God knows what it would cost _me!_ But I give you free leave. The instant you find a flaw in either, I am no longer worthy of your love; withdraw it, and I will never complain. But trust me you must and will; I merit your confidence, and I exact it. Look at me, Ernest. Do you believe I could ever deceive you?"
He looked into her eyes long and earnestly.
"No. When you do, your eyes will droop before mine. I trust you, Beatrice, fully, and I know you will never wrong it."
She clung to him with caressant softness, softer in her than in a meeker-spirited woman, as she whispered, 'Never!' and a man would need have been obtuse and skeptical, indeed, who could then have doubted her. And so that cloud blew over, for a time, at the least--trusted, Beatrice Boville was soft and gentle as a lamb; mistrusted or misjudged, she was fiery as a young lioness, and Earlscourt, I thought, though originally won by her intellect, held her too much as a child to fully understand her character, and to see that, though she was his darling and plaything, she was also a passionate, ardent, proud-spirited woman, stung by injustice and impatient of doubt. No two people could be more fitted to make each other's happiness, yet it struck me that it was just possible they might make each other's misery very completely, through want of comprehension on the one side, through want of explanation on the other.