"You need not guess then; I'll tell you. Don't you see that I am in a very unfortunate position? I said to you the other night that I—I loved you, that I would teach you to love me; and I could have done it, Elizabeth! I am sure that you would have loved me in time."
"Well?" said Elizabeth, softly. Her lips were slightly tremulous, but they were smiling, too.
"Well!" repeated her cousin. "That's all. There's an end to it. Do you think I should ever have breathed a word into your ear if I had known what I know now?"
"The fact being," said Elizabeth, "that your pride is so much stronger than your love, that you would never tell a woman you loved her if she happened to have a few pounds more than you."
"Exactly so," he answered, stubbornly.
"Then—as a matter of argument only, Percival—I think you are wrong."
"Wrong, am I? Do you think that a man likes to take gifts from his wife's hands? Do you think it is pleasant for me to hear you offer compensation to my father for the trifle that he has spent on you during the last few years, and not to be in a position to render such an offering unnecessary? I tell you it is the most galling thing in the world, and, if for one moment you thought me capable of speaking to you as I did the other night, now that I know you to be a wealthy woman, I could never look you in the face again. If I seem angry you must try to forgive me; you know me of old—I am always detestable when I am in pain—as I am now."
He struck his foot angrily against the fender; his handsome face was drawn and lined with the pain of which he spoke.
"Be patient, Percival," she said, with a smile which seemed to mock him by its very sweetness. "As you say to me, you may think differently in time."
"And what if I do think differently? What good will it be?" he asked her. "I am not patient; I am not resigned to my fate, and I never shall be; does it make the loss of my hopes any easier to bear when you tell me that I shall think differently in time? You might as well try to make a man with a broken leg forget his pain by telling him that in a hundred years' time he will be dead and buried!"