es; but I am equally sure that anything that concerns you _is_ of
import to me. To whom should you tell anything, if not to me? I do not
like concealment, Beatrice."

His tone was grave; indeed, too much like reproof to a fractious child
to suit Beatrice's pride. She drew away from him.

"Nor I. You must think but meanly of me if you can impute anything like
concealment to me."

"How can I do otherwise? You tell me you have been annoyed, and refuse
to say how, and by whom. Is that anything but concealment? If any one
has offended or insulted you, I ought to be the first you came to. A
woman, Beatrice, should have nothing hidden from the man who is, or will
be, her husband."

She threw her arms around him. Her moods were variable as a child's.
Perhaps this very variability Earlscourt hardly understood, for it was
utterly opposed to his own character: you always found him the same;
_she_ would be all storm one moment, all sunshine the next.

"Do you suppose I would hide anything from you? Do you think for a
moment I would hold back anything you had a right to know? You might
look into my heart; there would be no thought or feeling there I should
wish to keep from you. But if you exact confidence, so do I. Would you
think of taking as your wife one you could not trust?"

He answered her a little sternly:

"No; if I once ceased to believe in your truth or honor, as I believe in
my own, I should part from you forever, though God knows what it would
cost me!"

"God knows what it would cost _me!_ But I give you free leave. The
instant you find a flaw in either, I am no longer worthy of your love;
withdraw it, and I will never complain. But trust me you must and will;
I merit your confidence, and I exact it. Look at me, Ernest. Do you
believe I could ever deceive you?"

He looked into her eyes long and earnestly.

"No. When you do, your eyes will droop before mine. I trust you,
Beatrice, fully, and I know you will never wrong it."

She clung to him with caressant softness, softer in her than in a
meeker-spirited woman, as she whispered, 'Never!' and a man would need
have been obtuse and skeptical, indeed, who could then have doubted her.
And so that cloud blew over, for a time, at the least--trusted, Beatrice
Boville was soft and gentle as a lamb; mistrusted or misjudged, she was
fiery as a young lioness, and Earlscourt, I thought, though originally
won by her intellect, held her too much as a child to fully unders