I had been
apprenticed, as you may say, to frauds and deceptions--some of them on
such a grand scale, and managed so cleverly, that they became famous,
and appeared in the newspapers. Was such a little thing as the keeping
of the nightgown likely to weigh on my spirits, and to set my heart
sinking within me, at the time when I ought to have spoken to you? What
nonsense to ask the question! The thing couldn't be.
"Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own folly? The plain
truth is plain enough, surely? Behind your back, I loved you with all
my heart and soul. Before your face--there's no denying it--I was
frightened of you; frightened of making you angry with me; frightened
of what you might say to me (though you HAD taken the Diamond) if I
presumed to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near to it
as I dared when I spoke to you in the library. You had not turned your
back on me then. You had not started away from me as if I had got the
plague. I tried to provoke myself into feeling angry with you, and to
rouse up my courage in that way. No! I couldn't feel anything but the
misery and the mortification of it.
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