‘What is true?’

‘All that you have heard from your brother.’

‘All?—­But how can you know what he has said?’

They looked at each other.  Peak’s lips were set as if in resistance of emotion, and a frown wrinkled his brows.  Sidwell’s gaze was one of fear and appeal.

‘He said, of course, that I had deceived you.’

‘But in what?—­Was there no truth in anything you said to me?’

‘To you I have spoken far more truth than falsehood.’

A light shone in her eyes, and her lips quivered.

‘Then,’ she murmured, ‘Buckland was not right in everything.’

’I understand.  He wished you to believe that my love was as much a pretence as my religion?’

‘He said that.’

‘It was natural enough.—­And you were disposed to believe it?’

’I thought it impossible.  But I should have thought the same of the other things.’

Peak nodded, and moved away.  Watching him, Sidwell was beset with conflicting impulses.  His assurance had allayed her worst misgiving, and she approved the self-restraint with which he bore himself, but at the same time she longed for a passionate declaration.  As a reasoning woman, she did her utmost to remember that Peak was on his defence before her, and that nothing could pass between them but grave discussion of the motives which had impelled him to dishonourable behaviour.  As a woman in love, she would fain have obscured the moral issue by indulgence of her heart’s desire.  She was glad that he held aloof, but if he had taken her in his arms, she would have forgotten everything in the moment’s happiness.

‘Let us sit down, and tell me—­tell me all you can.’

He delayed a moment, then seated himself opposite to her.  She saw now that his movements were those of physical fatigue; and the full light from the window, enabling her to read his face more distinctly, revealed the impress of suffering.  Instead of calling upon him to atone in such measure as was possible for the wrong he had done her, she felt ready to reproach herself for speaking coldly when his need of solace was so great.

‘What can I tell you,’ he said, ’that you don’t know, or that you can’t conjecture?’

’But you wrote that there was so much I could not be expected to understand.  And I can’t, can’t understand you.  It still seems impossible.  Why did you hide the truth from me?’

’Because if I had begun by telling it, I should never have won a kind look or a kind thought from you.’

Sidwell reflected.

‘But what did you care for me then—­when it began?’

’Not so much as I do now, but enough to overthrow all the results of my life up to that time.  Before I met you in this house I had seen you twice, and had learned who you were.  I was sitting in the Cathedral when you came there with your sister and Miss Moorhouse—­ do you remember?  I heard Fanny call you by your name, and that brought to my mind a young girl whom I had known in a slight way years before.  And the next day I again saw you there, at the service; I waited about the entrance only to see you.  I cared enough for you then to conceive a design which for a long time seemed too hateful really to be carried out, but—­at last it was, you see.