There the page was turned down, and the explanation was concealed from me.

A faint color stole over her face as I handed the letter back to her.

“It is needless for you to read the end,” she said.  “You know, under his own hand, that he has left me; and (if such a thing pleads with you in his favor) you also know that he is liberal in providing for his deserted wife.”

I attempted to speak.  She saw in my face how I despised him, and stopped me.

“Whatever you may think of his conduct,” she continued, “I beg that you will not speak of it to me.  May I ask your opinion (now you have read his letter) on another matter, in which my own conduct is concerned?  In former days—­”

She paused, poor soul, in evident confusion and distress.

“Why speak of those days?” I ventured to say.

“I must speak of them.  In former days, I think you were told that my father’s will provided for my mother and for me.  You know that we have enough to live on?”

I had heard of it, at the time of our betrothal—­when the marriage settlement was in preparation.  The mother and daughter had each a little income of a few hundreds a year.  The exact amount had escaped my memory.

After answering her to this effect, I waited to hear more.

She suddenly became silent; the most painful embarrassment showed itself in her face and manner.  “Never mind the rest,” she said, mastering her confusion after an interval.  “I have had some hard trials to bear; I forget things—­” she made an effort to finish the sentence, and gave it up, and called to the dog to come to her.  The tears were in her eyes, and that was the way she took to hide them from me.

In general, I am not quick at reading the minds of others—­but I thought I understood Stella.  Now that we were face to face, the impulse to trust me had, for the moment, got the better of her caution and her pride; she was half ashamed of it, half inclined to follow it.  I hesitated no longer.  The time for which I had waited—­the time to prove, without any indelicacy on my side, that I had never been unworthy of her—­had surely come at last.

“Do you remember my reply to your letter about Father Benwell?” I asked.

“Yes—­every word of it.”

“I promised, if you ever had need of me, to prove that I had never been unworthy of your confidence.  In your present situation, I can honorably keep my promise.  Shall I wait till you are calmer? or shall I go on at once?”

“At once!”

“When your mother and your friends took you from me,” I resumed, “if you had shown any hesitation—­”

She shuddered.  The image of my unhappy wife, vindictively confronting us on the church steps, seemed to be recalled to her memory.  “Don’t go back to it!” she cried.  “Spare me, I entreat you.”

I opened the writing-case in which I keep the papers sent to me by the Rector of Belhaven, and placed them on the table by which she was sitting..  The more plainly and briefly I spoke now, the better I thought it might be for both of us.