“I can only guess them,” he said gravely; “I can only suppose that she is ashamed of her father and declines to meet any one connected with him. It is very wrong and very narrow of her. If I could talk to her for ten minutes and tell her how the poor old chap used to dream about her and kiss her picture, I can't think but she'd be sorry.”
“Try and think,” she said, looking still away from him, “that she must have another reason. You say that you liked her picture! Try and be generous in your thoughts of her for its sake.”
“I will try,” he answered, “especially--”
“Especially--because the picture makes me think--sometimes--of you!”
Trent had done many brave things in his life, but he had never been conscious of such a distinct thrill of nervousness as he experienced during those few minutes' silence. Ernestine, for her part, was curiously exercised in her mind. He had shaken her faith in his guilt--he had admitted her to his point of view. She judged herself from his standpoint, and the result was unpleasant. She had a sudden impulse to tell him the truth, to reveal her identity, tell him her reasons for concealment. Perhaps her suspicions had been hasty. Then the personal note in his last speech had produced a serious effect on her, and all the time she felt that her silence was emboldening him, as indeed it was.
“The first time I saw you,” he went on, “the likeness struck me. I felt as though I were meeting some one whom I had known all my life.”
She laughed a little uneasily. “And you found yourself instead the victim of an interviewer! What a drop from the romantic to the prosaic!”
“There has never been any drop at all,” he answered firmly, “and you have always seemed to me the same as that picture--something quite precious and apart from my life. It's been a poor sort of thing perhaps. I came from the people, I never had any education, I was as rough as most men of my sort, and I have done many things which I would sooner cut off my right hand than do again. But that was when I lived in the darkness. It was before you came.”
“Mr. Trent, will you take me back to Lady Tresham, please?”
“In a moment,” he answered gravely. “Don't think that I am going to be too rash. I know the time hasn't come yet. I am not going to say any more. Only I want you to know this. The whole success of my life is as nothing compared with the hope of one day--”