“She wishes it.”

“Why?”

He paused a moment.  Mrs. Simcoe continued: 

“Lawrence Newt, at least let us be candid with each other.  By the memory of the dead—­by the common sorrow we have known, there should be no cloud between us about Hope Wayne.  I use your own words.  Tell me what you feel as frankly as you feel it.”

There was simple truth in the earnest face before him.  While she was speaking she raised her hand involuntarily to her breast, and gasped as if she were suffocating.  Her words were calm, and he answered,

“I waited, for I did not know how to answer—­nor do I now.”

“And yet you have had some impression—­some feeling—­some conviction.  Yon know whether it is necessary that you should come—­whether she wants you for an hour’s chat, as an old friend—­or—­or”—­she waited a moment, and added—­“or as something else.”

As Lawrence Newt stood before her he remembered curiously his interview with Aunt Martha, but he could not say to Mrs. Simcoe what he had said to her.

“What can I say?” he asked at length, in a troubled voice.

“Lawrence Newt, say if you think she loves you, and tell me,” she said, drawing herself erect and back from him, as in the twilight of the old library at Pinewood, while her thin finger was pointed upward—­“tell me, as you will be judged hereafter—­me, to whom her mother gave her as she died, knowing that she loved you.”

Her voice died away, overpowered by emotion.  She still looked at him, and suspicion, incredulity, and scorn were mingled in her look, while her uplifted finger still shook, as if appealing to Heaven.  Then she asked abruptly, and fiercely,

“To which, in the name of God, are you false—­the mother or the daughter?”

“Stop!” replied Lawrence Newt, in a tone so imperious that the hand of his companion fell at her side, and the scorn and suspicion faded from her eyes.  “Mrs. Simcoe, there are things that even you must not say.  You have lived alone with a great sorrow; you are too swift; you are unjust.  Even if I had known what you ask about Miss Hope, I am not sure that I should have done differently.  Certainly, while I did not know—­while, at most, I could only suspect, I could do nothing else.  I have feared rather than believed—­nor that, until very lately.  Would it have been kind, or wise, or right to have staid away altogether, when, as you know, I constantly meet her at our little Club?  Was I to say, ’Miss Hope, I see you love me, but I do not love you?’ And what right had I to hint the same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter misapprehension and pain to her?  Mrs. Simcoe, I do love Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her too truly, not to try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly pride.  And so I have not staid away.  I have not avoided a woman in whom I must always have so deep and peculiar an interest, I have been friend and almost father, and never by a whisper even, by a look, by a possible hint, have I implied any thing more.”