“Sydney,” he whispered, “I love you.”

She heard him in rapturous silence.  Her kiss had answered for her.

At that crisis in their lives, they were saved by an accident; a poor little common accident that happens every day.  The spring in the bracelet that Sydney wore gave way as she held him to her; the bright trinket fell on the grass at her feet.  The man never noticed it.  The woman saw her pretty ornament as it dropped from her arm—­saw, and remembered Mrs. Linley’s gift.

Cold and pale—­with horror of herself confessed in the action, simple as it was—­she drew back from him in dead silence.

He was astounded.  In tones that trembled with agitation, he said to her:  “Are you ill?”

“Shameless and wicked,” she answered.  “Not ill.”  She pointed to the bracelet on the grass.  “Take it up; I am not fit to touch it.  Look on the inner side.”

He remembered the inscription:  “To Sydney Westerfield, with Catherine Linley’s love.”  His head sank on his breast; he understood her at last.  “You despise me,” he said, “and I deserve it.”

“No; I despise myself.  I have lived among vile people; and I am vile like them.”

She moved a few steps away with a heavy sigh.  “Kitty!” she said to herself.  “Poor little Kitty!”

He followed her.  “Why are you thinking of the child,” he asked, “at such a time as this?”

She replied without returning or looking round; distrust of herself had inspired her with terror of Linley, from the time when the bracelet had dropped on the grass.

“I can make but one atonement,” she said.  “We must see each other no more.  I must say good-by to Kitty—­I must go.  Help me to submit to my hard lot—­I must go.”

He set her no example of resignation; he shrank from the prospect that she presented to him.

“Where are you to go if you leave us?” he asked.

“Away from England!  The further away from you the better for both of us.  Help me with your interest; have me sent to the new world in the west, with other emigrants.  Give me something to look forward to that is not shame and despair.  Let me do something that is innocent and good—­I may find a trace of my poor lost brother.  Oh, let me go!  Let me go!”

Her resolution shamed him.  He rose to her level, in spite of himself.

“I dare not tell you that you are wrong,” he said.  “I only ask you to wait a little till we are calmer, before you speak of the future again.”  He pointed to the summer-house.  “Go in, my poor girl.  Rest, and compose yourself, while I try to think.”

He left her, and paced up and down the formal walks in the garden.  Away from the maddening fascination of her presence, his mind grew clearer.  He resisted the temptation to think of her tenderly; he set himself to consider what it would be well to do next.

The moonlight was seen no more.  Misty and starless, the dark sky spread its majestic obscurity over the earth.  Linley looked wearily toward the eastern heaven.  The darkness daunted him; he saw in it the shadow of his own sense of guilt.  The gray glimmering of dawn, the songs of birds when the pure light softly climbed the sky, roused and relieved him.  With the first radiant rising of the sun he returned to the summer-house.