Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/240

230 It wasn’t to be for myself; I thought you knew; indeed you did know!”

“But you looked so very strange, my dear. Evidently you felt”

“Yes—I feel it—I do feel it! But because it means that grandfather couldn’t get back his trust in me. Oh, it is too hard! When did he destroy his will? When, father?”

“Ten days before his death.”

“Yes; that was when it happened. You never heard; he promised to tell nobody. I disappointed him. I showed myself very foolish and weak in—in something that happened then. I made grandfather think that I was too selfish to live as he hoped,—that I couldn’t do what I’d undertaken. That was why he destroyed his will. And I thought he had forgiven me! I thought he trusted me again! O grandfather!”

Snowdon was astonished at the explanation of his own good luck, and yet more at Jane’s display of feeling. So quiet, so reserved as he had always known her, she seemed to have become another person. For some moments he could only gaze at her in wonder. Never yet had he heard, never again would he hear,