You don't like him, neither do I. We'll dismiss the subject from our
minds, forever. There's a good, honest boy here in Wallencamp that a girl
I know ought to busy her head about. Why trouble ourselves with
disagreeable things?"
"You might think, some time," Rebecca went on, with the same hopeless
expression, and in the same tense voice; "I never knew that about not
trustin' anybody till you told me. I hadn't never be'n away from here. I
wasn't brought up like you, and I wasn't so strong as you--you might
think, some time--but not now. I don't ask to have you now--you don't
see. I knew you wouldn't--you can forget--you're so happy--think of that,
sometime, how happy you was, sittin' there--but I never can forget any
more. I say it 'ud be'n better if I'd a died. It's the sin and the shame.
I've nothin' but to bear 'em, now, as long as I live. Oh, you might think
what it was not to have no hope anywheres!"
"What do you mean?" I cried, as it rushed over me in that instant what I
had been too heedless and slow to comprehend, the possible wretched
meaning of her words. "What do you mean?" rising and standing over her,
with a terrible sense of power to convict.
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