I don't know whether it was my fancy or not, but his voice seemed to tremble. I had never heard his voice tremble before.
"How can I tell?" said I, as well as I could speak the words for shame and heartache.
"A woman can tell fast enough," murmured he. And then he stopped; he came one step nearer to me. "And the fact is," said he, emphatically, "it seems a shame for a fine, clever girl like you to throw away such a man as the squire for the sake of a fellow who she isn't even sure gives her the best he has. I've no right to talk so to you, and I couldn't have done it if your mother hadn't made me promise to. She seemed to think I ought. But, upon my word, I'm of her mind. You think you care for that other fellow now, but if he don't give you what you've a right to expect, you wouldn't be the girl I take you for if you didn't put him out of your mind. There isn't anything in the world can live when it has nothing to feed on."
How every word seemed to fall like a stone into the bottom of a well! They echoed in my head after he had finished speaking. Another gust of wind came sweeping up from the invisible sea of water across the just visible sea of land. The moon made a little light again through a softer gray cloud, and shone with a wan, covered brightness upon us; the aspens on the cliff shivered—and I shivered too. The fire in my blood had burned itself out, I suppose, and the cold from without struck inward, for I felt as though I were frozen into a perfectly feelingless lump of ice.
"I wonder what would have happened if the squire's proposal had been made to Joyce, as we all supposed it would be?" said I, slowly.
I did not look at him, but I felt him start.
"Do you think she would have accepted him?" asked he. His voice did not tremble now; it was hard and metallic; it did not sound like his own. It drove me into a frenzy. All that had happened of late, all that had happened in the last half-hour, had been piling up the fuel, and now the instinctive knowledge of the feelings that had prompted that last speech of his set a light to the fire. I was mad with jealousy.
"I don't know," said I. "If the squire had proposed to Joyce, and she had known that she would help father, as you say, by marrying him, she might have brought herself to it. She is more unselfish than I am. She might have brought herself to marry one man while she loved another."
Harrod did not answer at first, but I felt his face turned upon me waiting for me to go on, and I heard him draw in his breath and breathe it out again, as if he were relieved.