"Oh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said? It has happened again! What have I done to wound you?"
She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep reproach.
"What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my heart!"
"Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting to guard your tongue, have betrayed you."
"Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These are hard words. When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no guarding for that."
"Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant they should."
"Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done this--surely you have not done this thing. Oh, one's enemy could not do it."
This was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly perceived before. Was it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.
"Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing. I have been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much, and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh, dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!"
There was reconciliation again-immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and with it utter happiness. This would have been a good time to adjourn. But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive. So he said:
"Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept shut up in my breast all this time. Your rank couldn't ever have been an enticement. I am son and heir to an English earl!"
The girl stared at him-one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her lips parted:
"You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind of blank amazement.
"Why--why, certainly I am. Why do you act like this? What have I done now?"
"What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement. You must see that yourself."
"Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement; but of what consequence is that, if it is true?"
"If it is true. You are already retiring from it."
"Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that. I have not deserved it. I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?"
Her reply was prompt.
"Simply because you didn't speak it earlier!"
"Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there was reason in it.
"You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had determined to pay your court to me."
"Its true, it's true, I know it! But there were circumstances--in-- in the way--circumstances which--"
She waved the circumstances aside.