CHAPTER XV.

CONFIDENTIAL TALK.

Dane waited, till Dingee's services had been performed and the

door was closed behind him again; then came beside Wych Hazel

where she was standing and drew her within his arm.

'What do you wish you could tell me, Hazel?' he said, with the

tenderness of eye and voice which, with him, came instead of

expletives of endearment. There was a faint quiver of the lips that

answered,

'Things—about me, that you ought to know. And it is very hard to

tell you some things, Mr. Rollo.'

'It would be easier, if you could call me something else,' he said,

bending to kiss her. 'I should like to know anything about you.

What are these "things"?'

'My thoughts— and life. And I cannot tell them without saying so

much—that I would not say, and, maybe, ought not.—Only, when

you begin to start questions—and subjects,—then,—' Hazel paused

to gather her forces. 'Then I think it is right you should know

everything about me, first.' The last word came out very low, and

even the instinct of truth could hardly have carried her further just

then.

'Go on, and tell me,' said Dane gently. 'The words are as sweet to

me as a chime of bells; but, just yet, not so intelligible.'

She stood very still for a minute, her head bent down. Then softly

disengaged herself.

'I cannot talk to you so,' she said. 'Sit down, please, in the bergère,

and let me sit here; and I will tell—what I can.'

"Here" meant a low foot cushion near the bergère, where the

young lady placed herself, but a little drawn back and turned away,

where only the firelight could look in her face.

'Stop!'—said Dane, arresting this part of the arrangements. 'You at

my feet!'—

'Yes, if I like it,' said Hazel. 'When you have to gainsay people in

great things, you should always let them have their way in small.'

She got up and crossed over to the fire, replacing a brand that had

fallen down; came back to her cushion and sat there a minute with

her hands folded.

'A year ago,—' she said, 'when you drove home with me from

Moscheloo,—you had no new views, Mr. Rollo. None in practice.

In a sense, you and I were on the same ground.'

'Well?'—said he, a little anxiously.

'Then in the winter,—I partly guessed first from Dr. Maryland's

words what you told me,—in effect, yourself. And at first I liked

it,—I thought I was glad.'

'At first'—echoed Rollo.

'At first,' Hazel repeated. 'It suited me, to have you take the highest

stand you could, and Mrs. Coles stirred up enough antagonism to

keep me from knowing that I was anything but glad.'

'Why should you be anything but glad?' said Dane, in tones which

did not reveal the surprise which was growing upon him.

'I did not know that I was—until you came. Mr. Falkirk kept up the

antagonism, and I had not much time to think. But when you

came—' She hesitated a little, then went steadily on. It was so like

Hazel, to do what she had to do, if it took her through fire and

water!—'I had left you standing in one place,' she said, 'and you

had moved quite away to another. And I knew—that standing

there—you would never have seen me.'

'That is a conclusion you have no right to,' said Dane calmly.

'No matter—it is true. You eyes would have been set for other

things, and your appreciation would have been all changed and

different. I knew it then, that night. You talked of things I but half

understood, and your face was all shining with a light that did not

fall on me. And partly it mortified me,—I was used to having at

least some vantage ground; and partly it brought back the old

loneliness, which had—perhaps—just a little bit gone away. Then

you left me a lesson.'

Dane sat where she had desired him, but leaning down towards

her, listening and looking very gravely and intently. 'Yes,' he

answered; 'and you studied it.'

'I tried.'—The words came rather faintly. 'And that was there the

tangle began.'

'What made the tangle?'

'Because—because the lesson and you were all wrapped up

together. And I could never study it without—studying you. And

so—so it came,'—she drew her breath a little, holding her fingers

tight,—'that before I _could_ know much about that—I had to decide

something else—definitely—first.'

Certainly some things are hard to tell!

'Well, you _did_ decide something else definitely,' said Dane, with

most delightful matter-of-fact gravity of manner, not seeming to

recognize her difficulty at all.

'Then the tangle grew worse,' said Hazel. 'I used to think I was

trying to be interested, or trying to understand, or trying to do, just

to please you,—or because you would like me better. And

besides—'

'Well—it would not have been very wicked if that had been partly

true.'

'No,' said Hazel,—'but then the work would not have been real;

and I never could tell. And besides,' she went on again, 'you did

not come, and I did not hear,—and it did not suit me to be always

thinking about you—and I tried to put the whole thing out of my

head.'

'Did I make a mistake then?' said Rollo. 'But I found I could not

bear very well to meet you on the neutral ground of that year. I

was waiting.'

'Yes. I was not speaking of that,' she said. 'When you take such a

tangle into society, it ties itself into twenty new knots. That is all

that need be said of the summer and spring. Then I came home.'

'And _then_ I made a mistake,' said Rollo. 'You need not tell me

that.'

She sighed a little, answering to another point.

'You could not know that you had started all the old questions

again, and that I thought it was maybe your changed point of

view—that made it so easy for you to give me up.'

'But why do you recal all this now, Hazel?' asked Dane, very

quietly. 'I never gave you up; it was a fancied somebody that was

not you.'

'It came in the course of my story. I could not pass it. Only for

that,' she said, turning her face towards him for a moment.

'Because then, in some of those days, I thought—perhaps—I had

learned the lesson you set me.'

'And you do not think so now?'

'I am not sure that it was true work,' she answered slowly. 'For in a

storm one flies to shelter,—and just then my hands sought

anything that could stand and would not change. But now—'

Dane was proverbially scarce a patient man after a certain line was

passed. He left his chair now, stooped and took Hazel's hands and

gently pulled her up from her low cushion; and then took her in his

arms and held her close.

'I understand all about it,' he said. 'You need not try to tell me any

more. My little Wych!— Look here; there are just two things to be

said, one mediate, the other immediate. In the first place, no

uncertainty of motives need embarrass or delay your action in a

course that you know to be right. In the next place,—Hazel,—don't

you see, that when we have been married a while and I am become

an old story, I shall be more of a help and less of a hindrance? And

I know all about you; and I don't know it a bit better after all this

long exposition than I did before. And if I have changed my

standpoint relatively to some things, I have never changed it

respecting you, except to draw nearer. Now confess you have been

a foolish child.'

The soft laugh which answered him had more than shyness to

make it unsteady.

'I do not suppose you want to change me for anybody else,' she

said. 'But I do not want you to think I _am_ anybody else.'

There came just then rapid hoof-beats round the house, and in a

minute more Dingee presented himself in the red room, bearing a

request that Mr. Rollo would come to the side door for a moment,

to see Dr. Arthur Maryland.