She, too, felt much of that loneliness which his yearning eyes expressed so pathetically; she, too, was conscious of grave injustice and of an irretrievable wrong, and her heart went out to him immediately in kindness and in love.

“Don’t go, for pity’s sake,” he added entreatingly, for he thought that she meant to turn away from him; “surely you will not begrudge me a few words of kindness.  I have gone through a great deal since I saw you....”

She descended a few steps, her delicate hand still resting on the banisters, her silken kirtle making a soft swishing noise against the polished oak of the stairs.  It was a solace to him, even to watch her now.  The sight of his adored mistress was balm to his aching eyes.  Yet he was quick to note—­with that sharp intuition peculiar to Love—­that her dear face had lost much of its brightness, of its youth, of its joy of living.  She was as exquisite to look on as ever, but she seemed older, more gentle, and, alas! a trifle sad.

“I heard you had been ill,” she said softly, “I was very sorry, believe me, but ...  Oh! do you not think,” she added with sudden inexplicable pathos, whilst she felt hot tears rising to her eyes and causing her voice to quiver, “do you not think that an interview between us now can only be painful to us both?”

He mistook the intention of her words, as was only natural, and whilst she mistrusted her own feelings for him, fearing to betray that yearning for his friendship and his consolation, which had so suddenly overwhelmed her at sight of him, he thought that she feared the interview because of her condemnation of him.

“Then you believed me guilty?” he said sadly.  “They told you this hideous tale of me, and you believed them, without giving the absent one, who alas! could not speak in his own defense, the benefit of the doubt.”

For one of those subtle reasons of which women alone possess the secret, and which will forever remain inexplicable to the more logical sex, she steeled her heart against him, even when her entire sensibilities went out to him in passionate sympathy.

“I could not help but believe, good master,” she said a little coldly.  “Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, who, with all his faults of temper, is a man of honor, confirmed that horrible story which appeared in the newspaper and of which everyone in Thanet hath been talking these weeks past.”

“And am I not a man of honor?” he retorted hotly.  “Because I am poor and must work in order to live, am I to be condemned unheard?  Is a whole life’s record of self-education and honest labor to be thus obliterated by the word of my most bitter enemy?”

“Your bitter enemy? ...” she asked.  “Sir Marmaduke? ...”

“Aye!  Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse.  It seems passing strange, does it not?” he rejoined bitterly.  “Yet somehow in my heart, I feel that Sir Marmaduke hates me, with a violent and passionate hatred.  Nay!  I know it, though I can explain neither its cause nor its ultimate aim....”