"Why not?" he inquired.
"Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers--how can you ask?"
"Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. "It is about a
matter that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need
not consider that too carefully."
"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically.
She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death,
and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness
had come upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to
which he had betaken himself, his concealment from her of the
hardships that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all
that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The
retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought
that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her.
Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her
narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an
escapade with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing,
looked so grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that
harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident.
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