kept my secret yesterday--I mean my daring to
love you. I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct
pleased you perhaps, and spoke for me. You won't laugh, I am sure, if I
confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met you have
I known what true love is--and this at forty years old. How some people
would laugh! I own it seems melancholy to me."

"No; not melancholy."

Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain but a luxury to
feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where another man might have
seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and
might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocently blind to his
own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her. No more
certain way could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of
touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own.
The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck's
character--his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious
convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming
notice--had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily
intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as
strongly as she felt it now. By fine degrees, the warning remembrances
which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold on her memory.
Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his
feelings in his own presence. Such love as his had been unknown in her
experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost
depths, was more than the woman's nature could resist.

"I think you hardly do yourself justice," she said. "Surely you don't
regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my
old friend had deserted me?"

"No, indeed!"

"Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to know
who my friend was?"

"I should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the question."

"And did you believe that I had a good motive--a motive which you might
yourself have appreciated--for not telling you the name of that friend?"

"Is he some one whom I know?"

"Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said?"

"Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking."

"I can hardly believe it, when I remember how you spoke to me yesterday.
I could never have supposed, before we became acquainted with each
other, that it was in the nature of a man to understa