“I too!” he said, and he ventured to take her hand; “who am not worthy of your interest at all, and dare not lay my poor worthless life open before you. But listen, I will recant. One could not show you the past, in which one was wandering without any compass. But, Clare---- I am your cousin--I may call you Clare sometimes?--if one could be so bold as to believe that you took any interest--I mean--Edgar, for instance, who can be sure you take an interest--I do believe that such a lucky man as he is might tell you everything. Yes; no doubt your father did; but not the past--not all the past!” Clare drew a little aside, afraid, she could not tell why. She had withdrawn her hand from him at once. She had given him only a little bow of assent when he called her by her name. She had not _encouraged_ him--of that she was certain. “Perhaps it is best not to discuss it,” she said. “But I cannot tell you how that woman vexed me. To come and say she knew things of my own father which I did not know. Fancy, papa! Perhaps it is my pride--I should not wonder; but I could not bear it. And now, you know, if I look into his letters I may find things. Do you think it is likely? He was an old man; he was sixty when he died. He had been forty years in the world before he had any one--I mean before he had _me_ to confide in. Should I read them? Should I look at them? I don’t know what to do.” “If you could trust me,” said Arthur Arden. The thought flushed him with sudden excitement. This would indeed be delivering the very stronghold into his hands. And then all the remnants of honourable feeling that was left there stirred together in his mind. He blushed for the baseness he had almost meditated. “If you could trust me to look over them,” he resumed, with an earnestness which surprised himself, “you may be quite sure that any and every secret---- I mean--I am nearest to you after Edgar--it would be safe with me.”