And yet you said just now that you had something to repent of?"

"I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said that.
If I have injured any person, the person is myself."

She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her mother,
and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a false position
toward the honest man who loved her and trusted her. If he had been less
innocent in the ways of the world, and not so devotedly fond of her,
he might, little by little, have persuaded Catherine to run the risk of
shocking him by a confession of the truth. As it was, his confidence
in her raised him high above the reach of suspicions which might have
occurred to other men. He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her
face, which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the questions
he had asked.

"I hope you will forgive me?" he said simply.

She was astonished. "What have I to forgive?"

"My want of delicacy."

"Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as if
it were a fault! Over and over again I have noticed your delicacy, and
admired it."

He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.

"I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows," he said; "sorrows
that I cannot console. I don't deserve to be forgiven. May I make the
one excuse in my power? May I speak of myself?"

She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.

"The life I have led," he resumed, "accounts, perhaps, in some degree,
for what is deficient in me. At school, I was not a popular boy; I only
made one friend, and he has long since been numbered with the dead. Of
my life at college, and afterward in London, I dare not speak to you;
I look back at it with horror. My school-friend decided my choice of a
profession; he went into the navy. After a while, not knowing what else
to do, I followed his example. I liked the life--I may say the sea saved
me. For years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time.
I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of ladies.
The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition.
God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the
regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was preserved--miraculously
preserved--to profit by that dreadful experience. It made a new man of
me; it altered me ( I hope for the better) into what I am now. Oh, I
feel that I ought to have