“Gilbert, here?” she said with anger and fear; “in our garden? What have you come here for?”
She looked at him with surprise understanding nothing of his groveling at her feet.
“Rise and explain how you come here.”
“I will never rise till you forgive me,” he said.
“What have you done to me that I should forgive you? pray, explain. As the offense cannot be great,” she went on with a melancholy smile, “the pardon will be easy. Did Philip give you the key?”
“The key?”
“Of course, for it was agreed that I should admit nobody in his absence and he must have helped you in, unless you scaled the wall.”
“O, happiness unhoped for, that you should not have left the land! I thought to find the place deserted and only your memory remaining. Chance only—but I hardly know what I am saying. It was your father that I wanted to see—— ”
“Why my father?”
Gilbert mistook the nature of the question.