Even when I found Susy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that I might, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with YOU always; that I might be a part of YOUR home, your family, and have a place with her in YOUR heart; for it was you I loved, and YOU only.
Don't laugh at me, Mrs.Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I am telling you.

God help me!" If she only COULD have laughed,--harshly, ironically, or even mercifully and kindly! But it would not come.

And she burst out:-- "I am not laughing.

Good heavens, don't you see?
It is ME you are making ridiculous." "YOU ridiculous ?" he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice.
"You--a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistress of these lands where I am only steward--made ridiculous, not by my presumption, but by my confession?
Was the saint you just now admired in Father Esteban's chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who were kneeling before it ?" "Hush! This is wicked! Stop!" She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice and manner.

She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it between passion and impiety.
"Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you.