But he only moved closer to her, passed his arm over her shoulders with a movement so natural and protecting that it had a certain dignity in it, and, looking down upon her bent head with eyes brimming with sympathy, whispered, "Poor, poor child!" Whereat Mrs.Horncastle again burst into tears.

And then, with her head half drawn towards his shoulder, she told him all,--all that had passed between her and her husband,--even all that they had then but hinted at.
It was as if she felt she could now, for the first time, voice all these terrible memories of the past which had come back to her last night when her husband had left her.

She concealed nothing, she veiled nothing; there were intervals when her tears no longer flowed, and a cruel hardness and return of her old imperiousness of voice and manner took their place, as if she was doing a rigid penance and took a bitter satisfaction in laying bare her whole soul to him.

"I never had a friend," she whispered; "there were women who persecuted me with their jealous sneers; there were men who persecuted me with their selfish affections.

When I first saw YOU, you seemed something so apart and different from all other men that, although I scarcely knew you, I wanted to tell you, even then, all that I have told you now.