"I thought you threw me over that day on the racecourse, and I have only tried to keep my place."
"But I have told you I never meant that."
"Yes, thank God! Whatever happens, I shall have this day to remember—that you came to me voluntarily to tell me that you had never been unworthy of yourself. You have asked me to forgive you, but it is I that want to be forgiven—for insulting you by thinking that money and grandeur and fine clothes could change you."
"They will never change me," said Patty, who had broken down altogether, and was making no secret of her tears. In fact, they were past making a secret of. She had determined to have no tender sentiment when she sought this interview, but she found herself powerless to resist the pathos of the situation. To be parting from Paul Brion—and it seemed as if it were really going to be a parting—was too heartbreaking to bear as she would have liked to bear it.
"When you were poor," he said, hurried along by a very strong current of emotions of various kinds, "when you lived here on the other side of the wall—if you had come to me—if you had spoken to me, and treated me like this then—"
She drew her hand from his grasp, and tried to collect herself. "Hush—we must not go on talking," she said, with a flurried air; "you must not keep me here now."
"No, I will not keep you—I will not take advantage of you now," he replied, "though I am horribly tempted. But if it had been as it used to be—if we were both poor alike, as we were then—if you were Patty King instead of Miss Yelverton—I would not let you out of this room without telling me something more. Oh, why did you come at all?" he burst out, in a sudden rage of passion, quivering all over as he looked at her with the desire to seize her and kiss her and satisfy his starving heart.
"You have been hard to me always—from first to last—but this is the very cruellest thing you have ever done. To come here and drive me wild like this, and then go and leave me us if I were Mrs. M'Intyre or the landlord you were paying off next door. I wonder what you think I am made of? I have stood everything—I have stood all your snubs, and slights, and hard usage of me—I have been humble and patient as I never was to anybody who treated me so in my life before—but that doesn't mean that I am made of wood or stone. There are limits to one's powers of endurance, and though I have borne so much, I can't bear this. I tell you fairly it is trying me too far." He stood at the table fluttering his papers with a hand as unsteady as that of a drunkard, and glaring at her, not straight into her eyes—which, indeed, were cast abjectly on the floor—but all over her pretty, forlorn figure, shrinking and cowering before him. "You are kind enough to everybody else," he went on; "you might at least show some common humanity to me. I am not a coxcomb, I hope, but I know you can't have helped knowing what I have felt for you—no woman can help knowing when a man cares for her, though he never says a word about it. A dog who loves you will get some consideration for it, but you are having no consideration for me. I hope I am not rude—I'm afraid I am forgetting my manners, Miss Patty—but a man can't think of manners when he is driven out of his senses. Forgive me, I am speaking to you too roughly. It was kind of you to come and tell me what you have told me—I am not ungrateful for that—but it was a cruel kindness. Why didn't you send me a note—a little, cold, formal note? or why did you not send Mrs. Yelverton to explain things? That would have done just as well. You have paid me a great honour, I know; but I can't look at it like that. After all, I was making up my mind to lose you, and I think I could have borne it, and got on somehow, and got something out of life in spite of it. But now how can I bear it?—how can I bear it now?"
Patty bowed like a reed to this unexpected storm, which, nevertheless, thrilled her with wild elation and rapture, through and through. She had no sense of either pride or shame; she never for a moment regretted that she had not written a note, or sent Mrs. Yelverton in her place. But what she said and what she did I will leave the reader to conjecture. There has been too much love-making in these pages of late. Tableau. We will ring the curtain down.
Meanwhile Elizabeth sat alone when her work was done, wondering what was happening at Mrs. M'Intyre's, until her husband came to tell her that it was past six o'clock, and time to go home to dress for dinner. "The child can't possibly be with him," said Mr. Yelverton, rather severely. "She must be gossiping with the landlady."