(she was incoherent in her passion) “you made me run out in the woods alone, till I could get a train, and I was so frightened of you coming, and finding me, and telling, that I had to give another name; and now, when I’m getting on in the world, I have to keep hiding all this at every turn because people wouldn’t think it very pretty conduct.  They’d think it was queer and get up a grand talk.  So I’ve told lies and changed my name, and it’s you that made me, Mr. Bates.”

He only took in a small part of the meaning of the words she poured upon him so quickly, but he could no longer be oblivious to her rage.  His joy in seeing her did not subside; he was panting for breath with the excitement of it, and his eyes gloated upon her; for his delight in her life and safety was something wholly apart from any thought of himself, from the pain her renewed anger must now add to the long-accustomed pain of his own contrition.

“But how,” he whispered, wondering, “how did you get over the hills?  How?—­”

“Just how and when I could.  ’Twasn’t much choice that you left me, Mr. Bates.  It signifies very little now how I got here.  I am here.  You’ve come after the old man that’s dead, I suppose.  You might have saved yourself the trouble.  He isn’t father, if that’s what you thought.”

He did not even hear the last part of her speech.  He grasped at the breath that seemed trying to elude him.

“You went out into the woods alone,” he said, pityingly.  He was so accustomed to give her pity for this that it came easily.  “You—­you mean over our hills to the back of the—­”

“No, I don’t, I wasn’t such a silly as to go and die in the hills.  I got across the lake, and I’m here now—­that’s the main thing, and I want to know why you’re here, and what you’re going to do.”

Her tone was brutal.  It was, though he could not know it, the half hysterical reaction from that mysterious burst of feeling that had made her defend him so fiercely against the American’s evil imputation.

She was not sufficiently accustomed to ill health to have a quick eye for it; but she began now to see how very ill he looked.  The hair upon his face and head was damp and matted; his face was sunken, weather-browned, but bloodless in the colouring.  His body seemed struggling for breath without aid from his will, for she saw he was thinking only of her.  His intense preoccupation in her half fascinated, half discomforted her, the more so because of the feverish lustre of his eye.

“I’m sorry you’re so ill, Mr. Bates,” she said, coldly; “you’d better lie down.”

“Never mind about me,” he whispered, eagerly, and feebly moved upon the seat to get a little nearer her.  “Never mind about me; but tell me, Sissy, have you been a good girl since you got off like this?  You’re safe and well—­have you been good?”

“I took your aunt’s money, if you mean that, but I left you my half of things for it; and anyway, it was you who made me do it.”