“The life I have led,” he resumed, “accounts, perhaps, in some degree, for what is deficient in me.  At school, I was not a popular boy; I only made one friend, and he has long since been numbered with the dead.  Of my life at college, and afterward in London, I dare not speak to you; I look back at it with horror.  My school-friend decided my choice of a profession; he went into the navy.  After a while, not knowing what else to do, I followed his example.  I liked the life—­I may say the sea saved me.  For years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time.  I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of ladies.  The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition.  God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the regions of eternal ice!  Let me only say I was preserved—­miraculously preserved—­to profit by that dreadful experience.  It made a new man of me; it altered me ( I hope for the better) into what I am now.  Oh, I feel that I ought to have kept my secret yesterday—­I mean my daring to love you.  I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct pleased you perhaps, and spoke for me.  You won’t laugh, I am sure, if I confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced.  Never till I met you have I known what true love is—­and this at forty years old.  How some people would laugh!  I own it seems melancholy to me.”

“No; not melancholy.”

Her voice trembled.  Agitation, which it was not a pain but a luxury to feel, was gently taking possession of her.  Where another man might have seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocently blind to his own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her.  No more certain way could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own.  The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck’s character—­his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming notice—­had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily intercourse.  Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as strongly as she felt it now.  By fine degrees, the warning remembrances which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold on her memory.  Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his feelings in his own presence.  Such love as his had been unknown in her experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost depths, was more than the woman’s nature could resist.

“I think you hardly do yourself justice,” she said.  “Surely you don’t regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my old friend had deserted me?”

“No, indeed!”

“Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to know who my friend was?”