She stopped, laid one hand lightly on my brow, and looked at me. "Who
has sent you here," she said, "into this home? Has God sent me help, a
true friendship to support me?" She paused, then added, as she laid
her hand firmly upon mine, "For you are good and generous--" She
raised her eyes to heaven, as if to invoke some invisible testimony to
confirm her thought, and then let them rest upon me. Electrified by
the look, which cast a soul into my soul, I was guilty, judging by
social laws, of a want of tact, though in certain natures such
indelicacy really means a brave desire to meet danger, to avert a
blow, to arrest an evil before it happens; oftener still, an abrupt
call upon a heart, a blow given to learn if it resounds in unison with
ours. Many thoughts rose like gleams within my mind and bade me wash
out the stain that blotted my conscience at this moment when I was
seeking a complete understanding.

"Before we say more," I said in a voice shaken by the throbbings of my
heart, which could be heard in the deep silence that surrounded us,
"suffer me to purify one memory of the past."

"Hush!" she said quickly, touching my lips with a finger which she
instantly removed. She looked at me haughtily, with the glance of a
woman who knows herself too exalted for insult to reach her. "Be
silent; I know of what you are about to speak,--the first, the last,
the only outrage ever offered to me. Never speak to me of that ball.
If as a Christian I have forgiven you, as a woman I still suffer from
your act."

"You are more pitiless than God himself," I said, forcing back the
tears that came into my eyes.