re suffocating. Her words were calm, and he answered,

"I waited, for I did not know how to answer--nor do I now."

"And yet you have had some impression--some feeling--some conviction. Yon
know whether it is necessary that you should come--whether she wants you
for an hour's chat, as an old friend--or--or"--she waited a moment, and
added--"or as something else."

As Lawrence Newt stood before her he remembered curiously his interview
with Aunt Martha, but he could not say to Mrs. Simcoe what he had said to
her.

"What can I say?" he asked at length, in a troubled voice.

"Lawrence Newt, say if you think she loves you, and tell me," she said,
drawing herself erect and back from him, as in the twilight of the old
library at Pinewood, while her thin finger was pointed upward--"tell me,
as you will be judged hereafter--me, to whom her mother gave her as she
died, knowing that she loved you."

Her voice died away, overpowered by emotion. She still looked at him,
and suspicion, incredulity, and scorn were mingled in her look, while her
uplifted finger still shook, as if appealing to Heaven. Then she asked
abruptly, and fiercely,

"To which, in the name of God, are you false--the mother or the
daughter?"

"Stop!" replied Lawrence Newt, in a tone so imperious that the hand of
his companion fell at her side, and the scorn and suspicion faded from
her eyes. "Mrs. Simcoe, there are things that even you must not say. You
have lived alone with a great sorrow; you are too swift; you are unjust.
Even if I had known what you ask about Miss Hope, I am not sure that I
should have done differently. Certainly, while I did not know--while, at
most, I could only suspect, I could do nothing else. I have feared rather
than believed--nor that, until very lately. Would it have been kind, or
wise, or right to have staid away altogether, when, as you know, I
constantly meet her at our little Club? Was I to say, 'Miss Hope, I see
you love me, but I do not love you?' And what right had I to hint the
same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter misapprehension and pain
to her? Mrs. Simcoe, I do love Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her
too truly, not to try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly
pride. And so I have not staid away. I have not avoided a woman in whom I
must always have so deep and peculiar an interest, I have been friend and
almost father, and never by a whisper even, by a look, by a possible
hint, have I