"Do you know," she said, breaking the silence again, "I was almost afraid to speak to you just now."
"You have suffered a good deal at our hands."
"Well?" His heart was in a tumult, but he kept himself well in hand.
"It must require a good deal of grace to keep you from hating us most intensely."
"I am afraid I am not as good a hater as I would like to be."
"It has not been for want of trying, I can assure you. But Fate loves to make fools of us."
"I don't think I quite understand," she said, looking puzzled.
"Do you want to understand?" he questioned, speaking slowly and steadily, though every drop of blood in his veins seemed to be at boiling point.
"Yes, very much," she answered, making a hole in the ground with her sunshade.
"Then you shall know," he said, with his eyes on some distant object. He had grown quite reckless. He feared nothing, cared for nothing. It would be a huge joke to tell this proud daughter of the house of Hamblyn the honest truth. Moreover, it might help him to defy the Fate that was mocking him, might help to relieve the tension of the last few days, and would certainly put an end to the possibility of her ever speaking to him again.
"You are right when you say I have suffered a good deal, I won't say at your hands, but at the hands of your father, and Heaven knows my hatred of him has not lacked intensity." Then he paused suddenly and looked at her, but she did not raise her eyes.
"You are his daughter," he went on, slowly and bitingly, "his own flesh and blood. You bear a name that I loathe more than any other name on earth."
She winced visibly, and her cheeks became crimson.
"But Fate has been cruel to me in every way. Your very kindness to me, to Ruth, to my mother, has only added to my torture----"
But he did not let her finish the sentence. His nerves were strung up to the highest point of tension. He felt, in a sense, outside himself. He was no longer master of his own emotions.
"Had you been like your father," he continued, "I could have hated you also. But it may be that, to punish me for hating your father so bitterly, God made me love you."
She rose to her feet in a moment, her face ashen.
"Don't go away," he said, quietly and deliberately. "It will do you no harm to hear me out. I did not seek this interview. I shall never seek another. A man who has been in prison, and whose mother died in the workhouse----"