"She told me because I asked her, pressed her. I knew that you had been here--a week ago, wasn't it?--I had caught a glimpse of your face as you left the house. And so I asked her. She is very reticent, very proud; she would never have told me, in spite of my asking, if her wish to show me that I had been mistaken in something I had said to her long before had not been stronger even than her reserve." "What was it that you were mistaken in?" said Owen, quickly. "I was not mistaken. But she wished to prove to me that I was. I had told her in October that she cared for you, and that she had made the greatest sacrifice a woman could make in voluntarily lowering herself in your eyes by allowing you to suppose--to suppose what you did." "You were mistaken, after all, Madam Carroll," said Owen, sadly. "She cares nothing for me." "Men are dull," answered the mistress of the Farms, wearily. "They have to have everything explained to them. Don't you see that it was inevitable that she should refuse you? As things stood--as you let them stand--she could not stoop to any other course. She knew that you believed that she had cared for--for Louis Dupont" (Madam Carroll's face had here a strange, set sternness, but her soft voice went on unchanged), "and she knew your opinion of him. She knew, moreover, that you believed it clandestine, that she had not dared to tell her father. For you to come, then, at this late day, believing all this, and tell her that you loved her--that seemed to her an insult. Your tone was, I presume (if not your words), that you loved her in spite of all." "Yes," Owen answered. "For that was my feeling. I did love her in spite of all. I had fought against it. I had thought--I don't know what. But it was over; whatever it had been it was ended forever, and my love had conquered. I knew that very well!" "And you told her so, I suppose--'I love you in spite of all'--when you should have said 'I love you; and it never existed.'" "But had she not told me with her own lips that it did exist, that she was engaged to him?" "You should not have believed her own lips; you should have risen above that. You should have told her to her face that you did not believe, and never would believe, anything that was, or even seemed to be, against her. I see you know very little about women. You will have to learn. I am taking all this pains for you because I want her to be happy. Her nature is a very noble one, in spite of an overweight of pride. She could not explain to you, even at that time, without betraying me, and that she would never do. But I doubt whether she would have explained in any case; it would have been doing too much for you." "All she did was done for her father," said Owen; "and it was the same with you, Madam Carroll. Seldom has man been so loved. My place with her will be but a second one." "That should content you."