“I know you will despise me, hate me; and, perhaps, worst of all, disbelieve me; but I swear to you, now, that I have always loved you,—­yes, always!  When first I came here, it was not to see my old playmate, but you, for I had kept the memory of you as I first saw you when a boy, and you have always been my ideal.  I have thought of, dreamed of, worshiped, and lived for no other woman.  Even when I found Susy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that I might, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with you always; that I might be a part of your home, your family, and have a place with her in your heart; for it was you I loved, and you only.  Don’t laugh at me, Mrs. Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I am telling you.  God help me!”

If she only could have laughed,—­harshly, ironically, or even mercifully and kindly!  But it would not come.  And she burst out:—­

“I am not laughing.  Good heavens, don’t you see?  It is me you are making ridiculous.”

“You ridiculous?” he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice.  “You—­a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistress of these lands where I am only steward—­made ridiculous, not by my presumption, but by my confession?  Was the saint you just now admired in Father Esteban’s chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who were kneeling before it?”

“Hush!  This is wicked!  Stop!”

She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice and manner.  She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it between passion and impiety.

“Not until I have told you all, and I must before I leave you.  I loved you when I came here,—­even when your husband was alive.  Don’t be angry, Mrs. Peyton; he would not, and need not, have been angry; he would have pitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of his passion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but one.  And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought of me at all.  It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in the boudoir.  I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; with your presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind,—­yes, Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy.  Only, then, I knew not what it was.”

“But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now,” said Mrs. Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a moment after on her lips.  “I remember it very well.  You told me then that I reminded you of your mother.  Well, I am not old enough to be your mother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might have been, the mother of your wife.  That was what you meant then; that is what you mean now.  I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make me ridiculous.  I ask your pardon.  Let us leave it as it was that day in the boudoir, as it is now.  Let me still remind you of your mother,—­I know she must have been a good woman to have had so good a son,—­and when you have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me for a mother’s blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection and misunderstanding of this evening.”