Instead of acting as impulse commanded, I said clumsily, "And I am very
different to-day from what I was last spring." It never occurred to me how
she might interpret those words.
"I know," she replied. She waited several seconds before adding: "I, too,
have changed. I see that I was far more guilty than you. There is no excuse
for me. I was badly brought up, as you used to say, but--"
"No--no," I began to protest.
She cut me short with a sad: "You need not be polite and spare my feelings.
Let's not talk of it. Let us go back to the object I had in coming for you
to-day."
"You owe me nothing," I repeated. "Your brother and your father settled
long ago. I lost nothing through them. And I've learned that if I had never
known you, Roebuck and Langdon would still have attacked me."
"What my uncle gave me has been transferred to you," said she, woman
fashion, not hearing what she did not care to heed. "I can't make you
accept it; but there it is, and there it stays."
"I can not take it," said I. "If you insist on leaving it in my name, I
shall simply return it to your uncle."
"I wrote him what I had done," she rejoined. "His answer came yesterday. He
approves it."
"Approves it!" I exclaimed.
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