I kept my nerve, for that was the only hope in her present frame of mind.

“’Tis a very ill-convenient thing for my future wife to wish she was dead,” I told her; “and why for has Tom gone to see your father?  Mr. Owlet ain’t the sort of man to find a gay young spark like Tom much to his taste.”

“You must listen,” she said, “and God forgive me for saying what I’m going to say, but I can’t live a lie no more, William, and Tom can’t live a lie no more.  He loves me and I love him.  I thought I loved you, and do love you most sure and true and never better than now; but I don’t love you like I love him.”

Then she poured it all out—­how they’d found their real selves in each other and so on—­and I couldn’t make up my mind on the instant whether she spoke true, or whether she only thought she did.  Being a proud sort of man, I very well knew that there’d be no great fuss and splutter on my side in any case, nor yet no silly attempts to keep her if her heart was gone; but she appeared so excited and so properly frantic and so torn in half between what she felt for Tom Bond and what she felt for me, that I perceived how I must go steady and larn a lot more about the facts before I stood down.  There was my self-respect, of course, but there was also my deep affection for the girl.  What did amaze me was that I’d never seen the thing unfolding under my eyes, and that none of the staff had called my attention to it.  But none had—­man or woman—­and when, afterwards, I asked one or two of the elder ones if they’d marked any improprieties I ought to know about, all said they had not.  So that was another feather in Tom Bond’s cap in a manner of speaking, for he’d made amazing sure of his ground and got himself safe planted in Jenny’s affections without giving one sign, even to my eyes, that he was up to any wickedness.

I knew he was clever, but shouldn’t have thought anybody could be so clever as that with the woman of my choice.  And I knew, only too well, that Jenny must have been amazing clever also.  I calmed her down and showed no spark of anger and didn’t say a hard word against Bond; but that night, after dinner, I bade him come in my pantry and tell me what he’d been doing.  Because a lot turned in my mind on the way he was going to state the case, and I weren’t in no yielding mood to him.  Words flowed from the man, like feathers off a goose, and under his regrets and shame, and all the rest of it, was a sort of a hidden note of triumph, which I didn’t like at all, because it showed he was contemptuous of me at heart and knew he’d got the whip-hand.

“It’s this way, Mr. Morris,” he said.  “I have nothing much to tell you that will excuse what’s happened.  I knew you were engaged to her and all that; and God’s my judge, I never dreamed to come between; but nature’s stronger than the strongest, and I hadn’t been here six months before I knew it was life or death between me and Jenny.  I fought it down and so