Chapter XLIV.

Think of Consequences.

Catherine listened to the fall of water in the basin of the fountain.  She was conscious of a faint hope—­a hope unworthy of her—­that Kitty might get weary of the gold-fishes, and might interrupt them.  No such thing happened; no stranger appeared on the path which wound through the garden.  She was alone with him.  The influences of the still and fragrant summer evening were influences which breathed of love.

“Have you thought of me since yesterday?” he asked gently.

She owned that she had thought of him.

“Is there no hope that your heart will ever incline toward me?”

“I daren’t consult my heart.  If I had only to consider my own feelings—­” She stopped.

“What else have you to consider?”

“My past life—­how I have suffered, and what I have to repent of.”

“Has your married life not been a happy one?” he asked.

“Not a happy one—­in the end,” she answered.

“Through no fault of yours, I am sure?”

“Through no fault of mine, certainly.”

“And yet you said just now that you had something to repent of?”

“I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said that.  If I have injured any person, the person is myself.”

She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her mother, and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a false position toward the honest man who loved her and trusted her.  If he had been less innocent in the ways of the world, and not so devotedly fond of her, he might, little by little, have persuaded Catherine to run the risk of shocking him by a confession of the truth.  As it was, his confidence in her raised him high above the reach of suspicions which might have occurred to other men.  He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her face, which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the questions he had asked.

“I hope you will forgive me?” he said simply.

She was astonished.  “What have I to forgive?”

“My want of delicacy.”

“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as if it were a fault!  Over and over again I have noticed your delicacy, and admired it.”

He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.

“I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows,” he said; “sorrows that I cannot console.  I don’t deserve to be forgiven.  May I make the one excuse in my power?  May I speak of myself?”

She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.