She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace, clutching the mantel-shelf.

“Don’t!” she pleaded.  “Please don’t—­I can’t.”

“You can’t!...  Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel differently —­I didn’t mean to startle you,” she heard him reply gently.  This humility, in him, was unbearable.

“Oh, it isn’t that—­it isn’t that!  If I could, I’d be willing to serve you all my life—­I wouldn’t ask for anything more.  I never thought that this would happen.  I oughtn’t to have stayed in Silliston.”

“You didn’t suspect that I loved you?”

“How could I?  Oh, I might have loved you, if I’d been fortunate—­if I’d deserved it.  But I never thought, I always looked up to you—­you are so far above me!” She lifted her face to him in agony.  “I’m sorry—­I’m sorry for you—­I’ll never forgive myself!”

“It’s—­some one else?” he asked.

“I was—­going to be married to—­to Mr. Ditmar,” she said slowly, despairingly.

“But even then—­” Insall began.

“You don’t understand!” she cried.  “What will you think of me?—­Mrs. Maturin was to have told you, after I’d gone.  It’s—­it’s the same as if I were married to him—­only worse.”

“Worse!” Insall repeated uncomprehendingly....  And then she was aware that he had left her side.  He was standing by the window.

A thrush began to sing in the maple.  She stole silently toward the door, and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance.  He had turned.

“I can’t—­I can’t let you go like this!” she heard him say, but she fled from him, out of the gate and toward the Common....

When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden.  With an instant perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to the sofa in the library.  There the confession was made.

“I never guessed it,” Janet sobbed.  “Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you’ll believe me—­won’t you?”

“Of course I believe you, Janet,” Augusta Maturity replied, trying to hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity.  “I didn’t suspect it either.  If I had—­”

“You wouldn’t have brought me here, you wouldn’t have asked me to stay with you.  But I was to blame, I oughtn’t to have stayed, I knew all along that something would happen—­something terrible that I hadn’t any right to stay.”

“Who could have foreseen it!” her friend exclaimed helplessly.  “Brooks isn’t like any other man I’ve ever known—­one can never tell what he has in mind.  Not that I’m surprised as I look back upon it all!”

“I’ve hurt him!”

Augusta Maturity was silent awhile.  “Remember, my dear,” she begged, “you haven’t only yourself to think about, from now on.”

But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl impossible.  Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed....