'"
"I have been to blame, Eve; but speak out and let me know the worst.
You have heard something against her character? Speak plain out, for
Heaven's sake!"
"It is all very well of you to say speak plain out, but there are
things girls don't like to speak about to any man. But after what you
said, that you would listen to me if I--so it is my duty. You will see
my face red enough in about a minute. Two years ago I couldn't have
done this even for you. It is hard I must expose my own folly--my own
crime."
"Why, Eve, lass, how you tremble! Drop it now! drop it!"
"Hold your tongue!" said Eve, sharply, but in considerable agitation.
"It is too late now, after something you have said to me. If I didn't
speak out now, I should be like that bad man you told us of, who let
out the beacon light when the wind was blowing hard on shore. Listen,
David, and take my words to heart. The road you are on now I have been
upon, only I went much farther on it than you shall go." She resumed
after a short pause: "You remember Henry Dyke?"
"What, the young clergyman, who used to be always alongside you at our
last anchorage?"
"Yes. He was just such a man as Miss Fountain is a woman. He was but a
dish of skim-milk, yet he could poison my life."
Then Eve told the story of her heart. She described her lover as he
appeared to her in the early days of courtship, young, handsome, good,
noble in sentiment, and warm and tender in manner. Halcyon days--not a
speck to be seen on love's horizon.
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