? ? ? ? 'Are you composed enough,' said I, 'to speak on the subject which so interested you - I hope Heaven may remember it! - that snowy night?'
? ? ? ? Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.
? ? ? ? 'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said, after a few moments. 'I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,' she had shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.' 'It has never been attributed to you,' I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
? ? ? ? 'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken voice, 'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?'
? ? ? ? 'It was,' said I.
? ? ? ? 'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon my mind. I never could have kept out of it a single winter's night, if I had not been free of any share in that!'
? ? ? ? 'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said. 'You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe, - we know.
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