"Seem!" she said again, but meekly--"seem, and seem justly;--yet can you
suppose that when I became free to utter my remorse--to speak of
gratitude, of reverence--I was insincere? Darrell, Darrell, you cannot
think so! That letter which reached you abroad nearly a year ago, in
which I laid my pride of woman at your feet, as I lay it now in coming
here--that letter, in which I asked if it were impossible for you to
pardon, too late for me to atone--was written on my knees. It was the
outburst of my very heart. Nay, nay, hear me out. Do not imagine that I
would again obtrude a hope so contemptuously crushed!" (a deep blush came
over her cheek.) "I blame you not, nor, let me say it, did your severity
bring that shame which I might have justly felt had I so written to any
man on earth but you--you, so reverenced from my infancy, that--"

"Ay," interrupted Darrell fiercely, "ay, do not fear that I should
misconceive you; you would not so have addressed the young, the fair, the
happy. No! you, proud beauty, with hosts, no doubt, of supplicating
wooers, would have thrust that hand into the flames before it wrote to a
young man, loved as the young are loved, what without shame it wrote to
the old man, reverenced as the old are reverenced! But my heart is not
old, and your boasted reverence was a mocking insult. Your letter, torn
to pieces, was returned to you without a word--insult for insult! You
felt no shame that I should so rudely reject your pity. Why should you?
Rejected pity is not rejected love. The man was not less old because he
was not reconciled to age."

This construction of her tender penitence--this explanation of his bitter
scorn--took Caroline Montfort wholly by surprise. From what writhing
agonies of lacerated self-love came that pride which was but self-
depreciation? It was a glimpse into the deeper rents of his charred and
desolate being which increased at once her yearning affection and her