He uttered words she could not catch.

'The purity of your soul was precious to me,' she continued, her
accents struggling against weakness; 'I thought I had seen in you a
love of that chastity without which a man is nothing; and I ever did
my best to keep your eyes upon a noble ideal of womanhood. You have
fallen. The simpler duty, the point of every-day honour, I could not
suppose that you would fail in. From the day when you came of age,
when Mr. Mutimer spoke to you, saying that in every respect you
would be as his son, and you, for your part, accepted what he
offered, you owed it to him to respect the lightest of his
reasonable wishes. The wish which was supreme in him you have
utterly disregarded. Is it that you failed to understand him? I have
thought of late of a way you had now and then when you spoke to me
about him; it has occurred to me that perhaps you did him less than
justice. Regard his position and mine, and tell me whether you think
he could have become so much to us if he had not been a gentleman in
the highest sense of the word. When Godfrey first of all brought me
that proposal from him that we should still remain in this house, it
seemed to me the most impossible thing. You know what it was that
induced me to assent, and what led to his becoming so intimate with
us. Since then it has been hard for me to remember that he was not
one of our family. His weak points it was not difficult to discover;
but I fear you did not understand what was noblest in his character.
Uprightness, clean-heartedness, good faith--these things he prized
before everything. In you, in one of your birth, he looked to find
them in perfection. Hubert, I stood shamed before him.'

The young man breathed hard, as if in physical pain. His eyes were