“I am sure of it,” I said, “as he never loved any one but you.”

“Oh, the folly of it all!” she moaned, sitting huddled up in her little phaeton, with her eyes looking miserably before her.

Then she turned her gaze on me, and I felt as though her unhappy eyes scorched and burned me.

“Yet I very nearly ran away with Richard Dawson,” she said.  “In fact, I did run away with him that night after you had broken with him.  He concealed nothing from me.  He did not even pretend to love me.  And I went with him on those terms.  As the mercy of God would have it, we found that poor wretch in the road not twenty yards from my own gates.  It seemed to sober us.  We were both mad.  He would not let me touch him.  He told me to go back; that it was all over.  I crept back.  By the mercy of God I had left a door ajar.  I crept back to my room, and none knows that I ever left it except he and I and you.  Bawn, am I not mad to tell you such a story?  You, an innocent girl!  I must be mad to tell my shame to any one when it might die with him and be buried with me.”

“The mercy of God met you at every step and saved you,” I said, feeling how little equal I was to the task of comforting her.

“Of course you despise me,” she said:  and the hard misery was gone out of her eyes and voice; “but I have confessed.  You will never look at me again, but you have taken the weight off my life that was crushing it.”

I could only answer her in one way.  I crossed the distance she had set between us, and took her in my arms and kissed her.

“I shall be your loving friend for ever,” I said, while she pushed me away and cried out that I must not touch her, lest she should have the infection about her.

“Although I never touched him, Bawn, I never touched him,” she kept on assuring me. “He would not permit it.  Bawn, if he is to die, don’t you think God will forgive him his sins because of that great act of charity?  The poor creature was horrible, horrible.  I ran away from him when the lamps were turned on his face.  But Richard Dawson was not afraid.”

“It was splendid of him,” I said.  “I am sure God has forgiven him.”

“And I need not tell my husband?  I have felt ever since that I must confess to him.  If I did he might forgive me, but it would never be the same again.  Now I have slaked my thirst for confession by telling you.  Bawn, do you think I must tell him?”

I felt as though I answered her with a voice and an authority not my own.

“You must never tell him,” I said.  “You owe it to him not to destroy his happiness.  If you have ever the need for confession again, come to me.”

“I will, Bawn dear, and God bless you,” she said, her face lighting.  “You have helped me so much.  Perhaps, after all, Robin may not be sickening for the small-pox.  What a thing that would be!”

“If he is he will still be in the hands of God,” I said.