“Engaged to her!”

“Well, were not you?”

“I never was engaged to any one in my life,” he answers with solemn asseveration; “odd as it may seem, I never in my life had asked any woman to marry me until I asked you.  I had known Zephine from a child; her father was the best and kindest friend ever any man had.  When he was dying, he was uneasy in his mind about her, as she was not left well off, and I promised to do what I could for her—­one does not lightly break such a promise, does one?  I was fond of her—­I would do her any good turn I could, for old sake’s sake, but marry her—­be engaged to her!—­”

He pauses expressively.

“Thank God! thank God!” cry I, sobbing hysterically; “it has all come right, then—­Roger!—­Roger!”—­(burying my tear-stained face in his breast)—­“I will tell you now—­perhaps I shall never feel so brave again!—­do not look at me—­let me hide my face; I want to get it over in a hurry!  Do you remember—­” (sinking my voice to an indistinct and struggling whisper)—­“that night that you asked me about—­about Brindley Wood?”

“Yes, I remember.”

Already, his tone has changed.  His arms seem to be slackening their close hold of me.

“Do not loose me!” cry I, passionately; “hold me tight, or I can never tell you—­how could you expect me?  Well, that night—­you know as well as I do—­I lied.”

“You did?”

How hard and quick he is breathing!  I am glad I cannot see his face.

“I was there!  I did cry! she did see me—­”

I stop abruptly, choked by tears, by shame, by apprehension.

“Go on!” (spoken with panting shortness).

“He met me there!” I say, tremulously.  “I do not know whether he did it on purpose or not, and said dreadful things! must I tell you them?” (shuddering)—­“pah! it makes me sick—­he said” (speaking with a reluctant hurry)—­“that he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I hated you, and it took me so by surprise—­it was all so horrible, and so different from what I had planned, that I cried—­of course I ought not, but I did—­I roared!”

There does not seem to me any thing ludicrous in this mode of expression, neither apparently does there to him.

“Well?”

“I do not think there is any thing more!” say I, slowly and timidly raising my eyes, to judge of the effect of my confession, “only that I was so deadly, deadly ashamed; I thought it was such a shameful thing to happen to any one that I made up my mind I would never tell anybody, and I did not.”

“And is that all?” he cries, with an intense and breathless anxiety in eyes and voice, “are you sure that that is all?”

“All!” repeat I, opening my eyes very wide in astonment; “do not you think it is enough?”

“Are you sure,” he cries, taking my face in his hands, and narrowly, searchingly regarding it—­“Child! child!—­to-day let us have nothing—­ nothing but truth—­are you sure that you did not a little regret that it must be so—­that you did not feel it a little hard to be forever tied to my gray hairs—­my eight-and-forty years?”