le wrong.

It never occurred to her to resent the familiarity. At sound of her name
thus spoken by him she had looked down from the stairs and seen his
pallid face turned up to her in such heartrending appeal for sympathy,
that all her womanly instincts of tenderness and pity were aroused, all
her old feeling of trustful friendship for him.

She, too, felt much of that loneliness which his yearning eyes expressed
so pathetically; she, too, was conscious of grave injustice and of an
irretrievable wrong, and her heart went out to him immediately in
kindness and in love.

"Don't go, for pity's sake," he added entreatingly, for he thought that
she meant to turn away from him; "surely you will not begrudge me a few
words of kindness. I have gone through a great deal since I saw
you...."

She descended a few steps, her delicate hand still resting on the
banisters, her silken kirtle making a soft swishing noise against the
polished oak of the stairs. It was a solace to him, even to watch her
now. The sight of his adored mistress was balm to his aching eyes. Yet
he was quick to note--with that sharp intuition peculiar to Love--that
her dear face had lost much of its brightness, of its youth, of its joy
of living. She was as exquisite to look on as ever, but she seemed
older, more gentle, and, alas! a trifle sad.

"I heard you had been ill," she said softly, "I was very sorry, believe
me, but ... Oh! do you not think," she added with sudden inexplicable
pathos, whilst she felt hot tears rising to her eyes and causing her
voice to quiver, "do you not think that an interview between us now can
only be painful to us both?"

He mistook the intention of her words, as was only natural, and whilst
she mistrusted her own feelings for him, fearing to betray that yearning
for his friendship and his consolation, which had so suddenly
overwhelmed her at sight of him, he thought that she feared the
interview because of her condemnation of him.

"Then you believed me guilty?" he said sadly. "They told you this
hideous tale of me, and you believed them, without giving the absent
one, who alas! could not speak in his own defense, the benefit of the
doubt."

For one of those subtle reasons of which women alone possess the secret,
and which will forever remain inexplicable to the more logical sex, she
steeled her heart against him, even when her entire sensibilities went
out to him in passionate sympathy.

"I could not help but believ