Passionate tears sprang into Winifred's eyes. This clearing of Anthony's honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?--his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion. "I am so thankful," she said. "Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don't want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,--for us all," she added softly. "Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun," said poor Anthony. "Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?" "How should it!--how should it!" she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. "O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?--are we not friends?--can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?" She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan. "What is the use of it all then?" he said. "One thinks of other people, I suppose," said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. "So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care--" She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,--for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,-- "For Miss Lovell, especially."