"
Should she tell him? She had a momentary impulse that way. Then
the irrevocableness of such a move frightened her; and, pale with
dismay at what she felt to be a narrow escape from a grave error
of judgment, she answered with just enough truth, for her to hope
that the modicum of falsehood accompanying it would escape his
attention:
"What has changed my intentions? My experience here, Judge
Ostrander. With every day I pass under this roof, I realise more
and more the mistake I made in supposing that any change in
circumstances would make a union between our two children proper
or feasible. Headstrong as I am by nature, I have still some sense
of the fitness of things, and it is that sense awakened by a
better knowledge of what the Ostrander name stands for, which has
outweighed my hopes and mad intentions. I am sorry that I ever
troubled you with them."
The words were ambiguous; startlingly so, she felt; but, in hope
that they would strike him otherwise, she found courage at last to
raise her eyes in search of what lay in his. Nothing, or so she
thought at first, beyond the glint of a natural interest; then her
mind changed, and she felt that it would take one much better
acquainted with his moods than herself to read to its depths a
gaze so sombre and inscrutable.
His answer, coming after a moment of decided suspense, only
deepened this impression. It was to this effect:
"Madam, we have said our say on this subject. If you have come to
see the matter as I see it, I can but congratulate you upon your
good sense, and express the hope that it will continue to prevail.
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