"I don't know. I don't know that it would have mattered." He was silent
again, with bowed head; when he looked up he saw tears in the girl's
eyes.

"I suppose you know where this leaves me?" she said gently.

"I can't pretend that I don't," answered Hewson. "What can I do?"

"You can sell me the place for what it cost you."

"Oh, no, I can't do that," said Hewson.

"Why do you say that? It isn't as if I were poor; but even then you
wouldn't have the right to refuse me if I insisted. It was my fault that
it ever came out about St. Johnswort. It might have come out about you,
but the harm to Mr. St. John--I did that, and why should you take it upon
yourself?"

"Because I was really to blame from the beginning to the end. If it had
not been for my pitiful wish to shine as the confidant of mystery,
nothing would have been known of the affair. Even when you asked me that
night if it had not happened at St. Johnswort, I know now that I had a
wretched triumph in saying that it had, and I was so full of this that I
did not think to caution you against repeating what I had owned."

"Yes," said the girl, with her unsparing honesty, "if you had given
me any hint, I would not have told for the world. Of course I did not
think--a girl wouldn't--of the effect it would have on the property."