"Heigh-ho!" sighed Jerome. "Just so it is in life. Just as a man begins to think he has put everything in order, and settled the question, here comes chaos again. You do not understand that, Mell? Well, I will tell you. Every man has a master--circumstance. On my side, I am surprised that you, with all your quickness of apprehension, have not been able to see clearer and deeper into this subject. You ought to have known, you must have felt that I had some good reason for acting towards you as I have to-day. Have you been true to your promise to trust me--and trust me blindly? I fear not. You have been cruelly angry with me ever since this morning, when I dared not speak." "And why was it that you dared not speak?" demanded Mell, her lip curling contemptuously, but with a tremolo movement in her voice. "Does it then require some courage for a man, in your position to speak to a poor girl like me? Rube does not think so." "With Rube it is different." "_It is_, very different. There is no false pride about Rube." "And I hope there is none about me. But, Mell, you do not in the least understand my position." "I know as much about it as I care to know. Henceforth, Mr. Devonhough, let us be strangers." "We can never be strangers," said Jerome. He was growing earnest; he spoke very low and with that rapidity of utterance which accompanies excited feelings. "This no time nor place, Mell, for such an explanation; but here, and now, I will make it. I cannot longer exist under the ban of your displeasure. Know then, dear, that I would not speak to you this morning for your own sweet sake--not mine. I was driven to it to protect your good name, and keep you out of the mouths of those shallow-pated creatures, who have nothing else to talk about but other people's failings. Had Clara Rutland once seen me speak to you--had she for one moment suspected the least acquaintance between us, that hydra-headed monster, Curiosity, would have lifted its unpitying voice in a hundred awkward questions: 'How did you come to know Mell Creecy? Where did you meet her? Who introduced you to her?' And so on to the end of a long chapter. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that I had never met you anywhere but in a cornfield. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that we had became acquainted in a very delightful, but by no means conventional, manner. I have thought it best, all along, to keep the fact of our acquaintance in the background, until we were brought together in some way perfectly legitimate and customary. Always for your sake, dear, not mine. Now you know in part; to-morrow I will make a clean breast of all my difficulties; so disperse these clouds, and give me one sweet look ere I go."