"Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily,
and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my
mind as he does. This is the constant burden:--'I believe, Beatrice, I
was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so
much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the
higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came
between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and
the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man
so compressed must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened
inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little
flowers, and they fall.'"

"And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there
had been a silence afterwards, "how say you?"

"Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that
you would never, never forgive."

"Until within these few weeks," he repeated. "Have you changed your
opinion of me within these few weeks?"

"Yes."

"For what reason?"

"I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, to my
terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of
the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument for a
bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so softened, you showed such