“But suppose you had something else on your heart.  Something that had nothing to do with—­with that sort of thing?” Claire asked.

“What sorter thing?”

“Why—­love.  Suppose you’d done something unworthy of you.  Suppose the sense of having done it made you wretched, made you want to make others wretched?  What would you do—­then?”

“Now, my dear, don’t you make no mistake.  I ain’t goin’ to be drew into no blindman’s grab-bag little game, not on your sweet life.  I ain’ter goin’ to risk havin’ you hate me all the rest o’ your nacherl life becoz, to be obligin’ an’ also to show what a smart boy am I, I give a verdick without all the everdence in.  If you wanter tell me plain out what’s frettin’ you, I’ll do my best accordin’ to my lights, but otherwise—­”

“Well—­” began Claire, and then followed, haltingly, stumblingly, the story of her adventure in the closet.

“At first I felt nothing but the wound to my pride, the sting of what he—­of what they said,” she concluded.  “But, after a little, I began to realize there was something else.  I began to see what I had done.  For, you know, I had deliberately listened.  I needn’t have listened.  If I had put my hands over my ears, if I had crouched back, away from the door, and covered my head, I need not have overheard.  But I pressed as close as I could to the panel, and hardly breathed, because I wanted not to miss a word.  And I didn’t miss a word.  I heard what it was never meant I should hear, and—­I’m nothing but a common—­eavesdropper!”

“Now, what do you think of that?” observed Mrs. Slawson.  “Now, what do you think of that?”

“I’ve tried once or twice to tell him—­” continued Claire.

“Tell who?  Tell Mr. Van Brandt?”

“No, Mr. Ronald.”

“O!  You see, when you speak o’ he an’ him it might mean almost any gen’l’man.  But I’ll try to remember you’re always referrin’ to Mr. Ronald.”

“I’ve tried once or twice to tell him, for I can’t bear to be untruthful.  But, then, I remember I’m ’only the governess’—­’the right person in the right place’—­of so little account that—­that he doesn’t even know whether I’m pretty or not!  And the words choke in my throat.  I realize it wouldn’t mean anything to him.  He’d only probably gaze down at me, or he’d be kind in that lofty way he has—­and put me in my place, as he did the first time I ever saw him.  And so, I’ve never told him.  I couldn’t.  But sometimes I think if I did—­if I just made myself do it, I could hold up my head again and not feel myself growing bitter and sharp, because something is hurting me in my conscience.”