Rachel took the opportunity to look at him.  You can’t really look at a person when he is looking at you.  Hugh was very handsome, especially side face, and he knew it; but he was not sure whether Rachel thought so.

He read mechanically: 

     “Take back your vows. 
     Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn;
     You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. 
     You lit those candles in another shrine,
     Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. 
     Take back your vows.”

A shadow fell across Hugh’s mind.  Rachel saw it fall.

“You do not think that of me, Rachel,” he said, pointing to the verse.  It was the first time he had alluded to that halting confession which had remained branded on the minds of both.

He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look through her clear eyes into her soul.

“I never thought that of you,” she said, with difficulty.  “I am so foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first time.  I am so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as I love you.”

“It is a dream,” said Hugh, passionately, and he fell on his knees, and hid his white face against her knee.  “It is a dream.  I shall wake, and find you never cared for me.”

She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, which was shaking him from head to foot.  Then she drew him into her trembling arms, and held his head against her breast.

She felt his tears through her gown.

“What is past will never come between us,” she said, brokenly, at last.  “I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my mind.  When you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by telling me, I suddenly trusted you entirely.  I had not quite up till then.  I can’t say why, except that perhaps I had grown suspicious because I was once deceived.  But I do now, because you were open with me.  I think, Hugh, you and I can dare to be truthful to each other.  You have been so to me, and I will be so to you.  I knew about that long before you told me.  Lady Newhaven—­poor thing!—­confided in me last summer.  She had to tell some one.  I think you ought to know that I know.  And oh, Hugh, I knew about the drawing of lots, too.”

Hugh started violently, but he did not move.

Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had raised it?

“Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, and she told me.  But we never knew which had drawn the short lighter till Lord Newhaven was killed on the line.  Only she and I and you know that that was not an accident.  I know what you must have gone through all the summer, feeling you had taken his life as well.  But you must remember it was his own doing, and a perfectly even chance.  You ran the same risk.  His blood is on his own head.  But oh, my darling, when I think it might have been you!”