"A girl can't marry to please her father," said I, "and my father is the last one to wish it."
"Of course," said he, persistently, "neither your father nor your friends would wish you to marry against your will for any advantage that might result. But why should it be against your will? The squire is such a good-fellow."
"Oh, don't ask me to talk about it," cried I. "I know he is good; I know all you say."
"If the truth were known, I expect there's a good bit of pride in it," smiled he. "You are your father's own daughter about that. And there's the squire, no doubt, thinks he's not half good enough for you. A man mostly does if he cares for a woman."
"It isn't that. I can't marry the squire, because I don't love him, and there's an end," cried I, desperately.
I wished he had never spoken to me about it; I could not understand how he could do so, even to please mother, at whose instigation I felt sure it was done. It seemed to me to be very unlike him, but since he had forced himself to speak, I must force myself to tell him that much of the truth. But I turned down away from him, and walked to the edge of the terrace.
Harrod, however, again followed me.
"Perhaps you don't know exactly what you mean by that," said he, gently. "Young girls don't always. And they think, because a man is a few years older than themselves, that it can't be a love-match. But sometimes they find out, after all, that it was a love-match, only they didn't know it at the time. Wise folk say that the best sort of love comes of knowledge, and isn't born at first sight, as some think it is."
They were mother's arguments. It was out of friendship for me, no doubt, that he repeated them, but they were mother's words, and they didn't touch me at all. All that I felt was a rage, rising horribly and swiftly within me, against the man who dared to utter them.
I did not reply. I only drew my cloak closer around me, for the marsh wind rose now and then in sudden puffs that found their way to the very heart of one; they sent the clouds flying across the sky, and the moon disappeared deep down into a bed of blackness—so deep that not even the hem of it was fringed as before with the silver rim; upon the marsh was unbroken night. I can see it still, I can feel the chill of it.