“Lawrence,” said she, with a womanly sweetness inexpressibly winning after the scene of stormy passions which had just passed, “do you think you can ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you, my heart’s idol! What have I to forgive you for? The consolation that you give me for my past, the hope that you bring me for my future?”
“No, no,” she murmured; “for having married you; for having—”
“Philippa!” he cried, lifting her face with the tenderest touch, and gazing long and earnestly into her eyes, “you are my wife. The holy words that made us one have hardly ceased to echo. Do not let us mar the moment, which can never come again, by any expression of doubt as regards the wisdom or the happiness of what we have done. Let us enjoy the delight of being all in all to each other, leaving to future hours, perhaps, the grief of knowing that, in seeking our own welfare, we have had to inflict disappointment upon others.”
“But—but—” she faltered, “you do not understand. I allude to my marrying you to-night, in this haste, contrary to all my declarations and every resolution I had formed.”
“And do you think I blame you for that? That my heart gave anything but a leap of joy when you stopped me in the hall and whispered in my ear, ‘I am ready, Lawrence, ready to do what you so often have urged me to do. I will marry you to-night if you say so’?”
“Oh!” she cried, and a flush of shame crept over her face, growing lovelier with every moment that passed till I wondered I had not seen at first glance that she was beautiful; “you reproach me with every word; you make me feel that there is no one less deserving of such faith and devotion than Philippa Irwin.”
“Philippa Sutton, darling; there is a difference,” he smiled.
The words seemed to strike her. She looked at him very earnestly for a moment.
“Yes,” she assented. “What were wisdom in Philippa Irwin may not be wisdom in Philippa Sutton. But truth is always wisdom, and I cannot enter upon our married life with the shadow of a falsehood on my heart. At the risk of losing your love, of seeing you turn away from me never to come back, I must be frank with you and open to the very heart’s core. Lawrence, I would not have married you to-night if—if it had not been for the disappearance of those diamonds.”