But she put them far less spontaneously, far
less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering
that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with. After a quarter of an
hour wasted in constrained inquiries on one side, in reluctant replies
on the other, she ventured near the dangerous subject at last.
"Have you received the letters I wrote to you from the seaside?" she
asked, suddenly looking away from him for the first time.
"Yes," he said; "all."
"Have you read them?"
"Every one of them--many times over."
Her heart beat as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her promise
bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck at
Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in her
sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she had
done, nothing even that she had thought, had been concealed from his
knowledge. As he would have kept a pledged engagement with her, so she
had kept her pledged engagement with him. She had not faltered in
the resolution to do this; and now she faltered over the one decisive
question which she had come there to ask. Strong as the desire in her
was to know if she had lost or won him, the fear of knowing was at that
moment stronger still.
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