Then these swift Camillas apparently neared the house, there was the rapid rustle of skirts, the skurrying of little feet on the veranda, a stumble, a mouse-like shriek from Milly, and HER voice, exhausted, dying, happy, broken with half-hushed laughter, rose to him on the breath of the jessamine and rose.
Surely she WAS a child, and, if a child, how he had misjudged her! What if all that he had believed was mature deliberation was only the innocent imaginings of a romantic girl, all that he had taken seriously only a school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions.

He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh.

He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance--it might be her very childish vanity.

He had brought to a question of tender and pathetic interest only his selfish opinion of the world and the weaknesses of mankind.

The blood came to his cheeks--with all his experienced self-control, he had not lost the youthful trick of blushing--and he turned away from the window as if it had breathed a reproach.
But ought he have even contented himself with destroying her illusions--ought he not have gone farther and told her the whole truth?
Ought he not first have won her confidence--he remembered bitterly, now, how she had intimated that she had no one to confide in--and, after revealing her mother's history, have still pledged himself to keep the secret from all others, and assisted her in her plan?
It would not have altered the state of affairs, except so far as she was concerned; they could have combined together; his ready wit would have helped him; and his sympathy would have sustained her; but-- How and in what way could he have told her?
Leaving out the delicate and difficult periphrase by which her mother's shame would have to be explained to an innocent school-girl--what right could he have assumed to tell it?
As the guardian who had never counseled or protected her?
As an acquaintance of hardly an hour ago?
Who would have such a right?
A lover--on whose lips it would only seem a tacit appeal to her gratitude or her fears, and whom no sensitive girl could accept thereafter?
No.