“I have more than consideration for you, Stella--”
She angrily interrupted him. “How dare you call me by my Christian name?”
He remonstrated, with a gentleness that might have touched the heart of any woman. “Do you still refuse to believe that I never deceived you? Has time not softened your heart to me yet?”
She was more contemptuous toward him than ever. “Spare me your protestations,” she said; “I heard enough of them two years since. Will you do what I ask of you?”
“Put an end to your acquaintance with my husband. Put an end to it,” she repeated vehemently, “from this day, at once and forever! Can I trust you to do it?”
“Do you think I would have entered this house if I had known he was your husband?” He made that reply with a sudden change in him--with a rising color and in firm tones of indignation. In a moment more, his voice softened again, and his kind blue eyes rested on her sadly and devotedly. “You may trust me to do more than you ask,” he resumed. “You have made a mistake.”
“When Mr. Romayne introduced us, you met me like a stranger--and you left me no choice but to do as you did.”
Her sharpest replies made no change in his manner. He spoke as kindly and as patiently as ever.
“You forget that you and your mother were my guests at Beaupark, two years ago--”
Stella understood what he meant--and more. In an instant she remembered that Father Benwell had been at Beaupark House. Had he heard of the visit? She clasped her hands in speechless terror.
Winterfield gently reassured her. “You must not be frightened,” he said. “It is in the last degree unlikely that Mr. Romayne will ever find out that you were at my house. If he does--and if you deny it--I will do for you what I would do for no other human creature; I will deny it too. You are safe from discovery. Be happy--and forget me.”
For the first time she showed signs of relenting--she turned her head away, and sighed. Although her mind was full of the serious necessity of warning him against Father Benwell, she had not even command enough over her own voice to ask how he had become acquainted with the priest. His manly devotion, the perfect and pathetic sincerity of his respect, pleaded with her, in spite of herself. For a moment she paused to recover her composure. In that moment Romayne returned to them with the drawing in his hand.