“It is also your right to know that I have always tried to live a pure and honorable life.  I have never told any woman but you that I loved her—­except an elderly cousin with whom I thought I was in love when I was nineteen.  She cured me of it by laughing at me, and I have been heart-whole ever since.”

She raised her eyes from reading the letter.

“You have all these, and I have nothing.”  She spread out her hands helplessly.  “It must seem strange to you that I am in this situation.  It does to me.  It is awful.”

She put her hands over her eyes and shuddered.

“It is to save you from it all that I have come.”  He leaned over and spoke tenderly, “Darling!”

“Oh, wait!” She caught her breath as if it hurt her, and put out her hand to stop him, “Wait!  You must not say any more until I have told you all about it.  Perhaps when I have told you, you will think about me as others do, and I shall have to run from you.”

“Can you not trust me?” he reproached her.

“Oh, yes, I can trust you, but you may no longer trust me, and that I cannot bear.”

“I promise you solemnly that I will believe every word you say.”

“Ah, but you will think I do not know, and that it is your duty to give me into the hands of my enemies.”

“That I most solemnly vow I will never do,” he said earnestly.  “You need not fear to tell me anything.  But listen, tell me this one thing:  in the eyes of God, is there any reason, physical, mental, or spiritual, why you should not become my wife?”

She looked him clearly in the eyes.

“None at all.”

“Then I am satisfied to take you without hearing your story until afterwards.”

“But I am not satisfied.  If I am to see distrust come into your eyes, it must be now, not afterwards.”

“Then tell it quickly.”

He put out his hand and took hers firmly into his own, as if to help her in her story.

[Illustration]

XI

“My father died when I was only a young girl.  We had not much money, and my mother’s older brother took us to his home to live.  My mother was his youngest sister, and he loved her more than any one else living.  There was another sister, a half-sister, much older than my mother, and she had one son.  He was a sulky, handsome boy, with a selfish, cruel nature.  He seemed to be happy only when he was tormenting some one.  He used to come to Uncle’s to visit when I was there, and he delighted in annoying me.  He stretched barbed wire where he knew I was going to pass in the dark, to throw me down and tear my clothes.  He threw a quantity of burrs in my hair, and once he led me into a hornet’s nest.  After we went to live at my uncle’s, Richard was not there so much.  He had displeased my uncle, and he sent him away to school; but at vacation times he came again, and kept the house in discomfort.  He seemed always to have a special spite against me.  Once he broke a rare Dresden vase that Uncle prized, and told him I had done it.