She made me no answer. Her hands trembled, and she bowed her head so that I could not see her face.
"Will you not forgive, dearest?" I urged. The great longing to speak out my mind had overcome me, and having eased myself of my burden I stood awaiting her response. "Will you not be mine again, as in the old days before this chain of tragedy fell upon your house?"
Again she hesitated for several minutes. Then, of a sudden, she lifted her tear-stained face towards me, all rosy with blushes and wearing that sweet look which I had known so well in the happy days bygone.
"If you wish it, Ralph," she faltered, "we will forget that any breach between us has ever existed. I desire nothing else; for, as you well know, I love no one else but you. I have been foolish, I know. I ought to have explained the girlish romantic affection I once entertained for that man who afterwards married Mary. In those days he was my ideal. Why, I cannot tell. Girls in their teens have strange caprices, and that was mine. Just as schoolboys fall violently in love with married women, so are schoolgirls sometimes attracted towards aged men. People wonder when they hear of May and December marriages; but they are not always from mercenary motives, as is popularly supposed. Nevertheless I acted wrongly in not telling you the truth from the first. I am alone to blame."
So much she said, though with many a pause, and with so keen a self-reproach in her tone that I could hardly bear to hear her, when I interrupted----
"There is mutual blame on both sides. Let us forget it all," and I bent until my lips met hers and we sealed our compact with a long, clinging caress.
"Yes, dear heart. Let us forget it," she whispered. "We have both suffered--both of us," and I felt her arms tighten about my neck. "Oh, how you must have hated me!"
"No," I declared. "I never hated you. I was mystified and suspicious, because I felt assured that you knew the truth regarding the tragedy at Kew, and remained silent."
She looked into my eyes, as though she would read my soul.
"Unfortunately," she answered, "I am not aware of the truth."
"But you are in possession of certain strange facts--eh?"
"That I am in possession of facts that lead me to certain conclusions, is the truth. But the clue is wanting. I have been seeking for it through all these months, but without success."