thought, and strives to recall what he was going to say. "What
sense,--what use," he resumed at last, as if continuing the course of
some previous argument, "would there have been in making a display of
our acquaintance before them? I did not suppose at first that they saw
us together."... But here he broke off, and, indeed, his explanation had
but a mean effect when put into words. "I did not expect them to stay. I
thought they would go away every moment; and then at last it was too
late to manage the affair without seeming to force it." This was better;
and he paused again, for some sign of acquiescence from Kitty, and
caught her eye fixed on his face in what seemed contemptuous wonder. His
own eyes fell, and ran uneasily over her dress before he lifted them and
began once more, as if freshly inspired: "I could have wished you to be
known to my friends with every advantage on your side," and this had
such a magnanimous sound that he took courage; "and you ought to have
had faith enough in me to believe that I never could have meant you a
slight. If you had known more of the world,--if your social experience
had been greater you would have seen.... Oh!" he cried, desperately, "is
there nothing you have to say to me?"

"No," said Kitty, simply, but with a languid quiet, and shrinking from
speech as from an added pang. "You have been telling me that you were
ashamed of me in this dress before those people. But I knew that
already. What do you want me to do?"

"If you give me time, I can make everything clear to you."

"But now you don't deny it."

"Deny what? I--"

But here the whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton's defence toppled to the
ground. He was a man of scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceive
himself or others. He had been ashamed of her, he could not deny it, not
to keep the love that was now dearer to him than life. He saw it with
paralyzing clearness; and, as an inexorable fact that confounded quite
as much as it dismayed him, he perceived that throughout that ignoble
scene she had been the gentle person and he the vulgar one. How could it
have happened with a man like him! As he looked back upon it, he seemed
to have been only the helpless sport of a sinister chance.

But now he must act; it could not go so, it was too horrible a thing to
let stand confessed. A hundred protests thronged to his lips, but he
refused utterance to them all as worse even than silence; and so, still
meaning to speak, he could not