Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/184

 I rose slowly, and continued the ascent.

"Then George is not in love with you, after all?"

"In love with me?" (emphatically). "Far from it! He never has been, and never will be."

"All his attention to you, which I took for pure devotion, was sympathy? The reason you and he were so fond of talking together was because you talked of Roger?"

"Yes; and when I was blue, he used to comfort me, and tell me that things would come out right in the end. He advised me many times to confide in you; but I never could get courage enough."

"Well," said I, as we entered the library-door together, "if anything remains of me after the successive shocks you have given me, it will be almost a miracle. How fortunate that the servants understand no English! Judith, you are a good girl" (giving her rather an awkward embrace, for I am not of a caressing disposition). "I cannot talk anymore about it now; for I must write it down in my journal."