She fancied he did not believe in her.

"I know! I know! you may well distrust me!" she returned. "I have
often behaved abominably to you! But indeed I am true now! I dare
not tell you a lie. To you I MUST speak the truth, for I love you
with my whole soul."

Ian stood dumb. His look of consternation and sadness brought her to
herself a little.

"What have I done!" she cried, and drawing back a pace, stood
looking at him, and trembling. "I am disgraced for ever! I have told
a man I love him, and he leaves me to the shame of it! He will not
save me from it! he will not say one word to take it away! Where is
your generosity, Ian?"

"I must be true!" said Ian, speaking as if to himself, and in a
voice altogether unlike his own.

"You will not love me! You hate me! You despise me! But I will not
live rejected! He brushes me like a feather from his coat!"

"Hear me," said Ian, trying to recover himself. "Do not think me
insensible--"

"Oh, yes! I know!" cried Christina yet more bitterly; "--INSENSIBLE
TO THE HONOUR _I_ DO YOU, and all that world of nothing!--Pray use
your victory! Lord it over me! I am the weed under your foot! I beg
you will not spare me! Speak out what you think of me!"