It wasn't anything really.

We had just been children together.
But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her--even my mother.

It would have looked so mean if after getting on I had married a fine London lady.

I could never have gone home again." "But you haven't married her--or have you ?" asked Joan.
"No," he answered.

"She wrote me a beautiful letter that I shall always keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping I might be happy.