On ordinary occasions
she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so
straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine.
But the time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a
knowledge of Knight's friend. When women are secret they are
secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be
secret with the advent of a second lover.
The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like
the Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to
lay it. Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and
trust to his generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as
mere policy it would be better to tell him early if he was to be
told at all. The longer her concealment the more difficult would
be the revelation. But she put it off. The intense fear which
accompanies intense love in young women was too strong to allow
the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to itself:
'Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.'
The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The
vicar remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram
she had received, and two days after the scene in the summer-
house, asked her pointedly. She was frank with him now.
'I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left
England, till lately,' she calmly said.
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