still looked at him in silence, while the tears rose, welled over,
and rolled slowly down.

"Can you not trust me?" he repeated.

She shook her head.

"But as you have told me something, why not tell me all?"

"I am afraid to tell all," she whispered.

"For yourself?"

"No."

"For him, then?"

"Yes."

He clinched his hand involuntarily as he heard this answer. Her pale
face and agitation were all for him, then--for Ward Heathcote!

"You are really shaken by fear," he said. "I know its signs, or rather
those of dread. It is pure dread which has possession of you now. How
unlike you, Anne! How unlike yourself you are at this moment!"

But she cared nothing for herself, nothing for the scorn in his voice
(the jealous are often loftily scornful), and he saw that she did not.

"Whom do you fear? The maid?"

"Yes."

"What can she say?"

"I do not know; and yet--"

"Is it possible--can it be possible, Anne, that _you_ are the person
implicated, the so-called rival?"

"I do not know; and it is because I do not know that I am so much
afraid," she answered, still in the same low whisper.

"But why should you take this possibility upon yourself? Ward Heathcote
is no Sir Galahad, Heaven knows. Probably at this moment twenty women
are trembling as you are trembling, fearing lest they be called by
name, and forced forward before the world."

He spoke with anger. Anne did not contradict him, but she leaned her
head upon her hand weariedly, and closed her eyes.

"How can I leave you?" he said, breaking into his old kindness again. "I
ought to go, but it is like leaving a girl in the hands of torturers. If
there were only some one to be with you here until all this is over!"

"There is no one. I want no one."

"You puzzle me deeply," he said, walking up and down with troubled
anxiety. "I can form no opinion as to whether your dread is purely
imaginary or not, because you tell me nothing. If you were an ordinary
woman, I should not give much thought to what you say--or rather to what
you look, for you say nothing; but you are not ordinary. You are
essentially brave, and you have fewer of the fantastic, irrelevant
fancies of women than any girl I have ever known. There must be
something, then, to fear, since _you_ fear so intensely. I like you,
Anne; I respect you. I admire you too, more than you know. You are so
utterly alone in this trouble that I can not desert you. And I will
not."

"Do not stay on my a