that
it was she who had done the wrong when she gave her hand to Robert
Kennedy? But he could not tell her, and he was dumb. "And so it's
settled!"

"No; not settled."

"Psha! I hate your mock modesty! It is settled. You have become far
too cautious to risk fortune in such an adventure. Practice has
taught you to be perfect. It was to tell me this that you came down
here."

"Partly so."

"It would have been more generous of you, sir, to have remained
away."

"I did not mean to be ungenerous."

Then she suddenly turned upon him, throwing her arms round his neck,
and burying her face upon his bosom. They were at the moment in the
centre of the park, on the grass beneath the trees, and the moon was
bright over their heads. He held her to his breast while she sobbed,
and then relaxed his hold as she raised herself to look into his
face. After a moment she took his hat from his head with one hand,
and with the other swept the hair back from his brow. "Oh, Phineas,"
she said, "Oh, my darling! My idol that I have worshipped when I
should have worshipped my God!"

After that they roamed for nearly an hour backwards and forwards
beneath the trees, till at last she became calm and almost
reasonable. She acknowledged that she had long expected such a
marriage, looking forward to it as a great sorrow. She repeated
over and over again her assertion that she could not "know" Madame
Goesler as the wife of Phineas, but abstained from further evil words
respecting the lady. "It is better that we should be apart," she said
at last. "I feel that it is better. When we are both old, if I should
live, we may meet again. I knew that it was coming, and we had better
part." And yet they remained out there, wandering about the park for
a long portion of the summer night. She did not reproach him again,
nor did she speak much of the future; but she alluded to all the
incidents of their past life, showing him that nothing which he had
done, no words which he had spoken, had been forgotten by her. "Of
course it has been my fault," she said, as at last she parted with
him in the drawing-room. "When I was younger I did not understand
how strong the heart can be. I should have known it, and I pay for
my ignorance with the penalty of my whole life." Then he left her,
kissing her on both cheeks and on her brow, and went to his bedroom
with the understanding that he would start for London on the
following morning before she was up.