"You could easily overcome any mere memory, but the decision she has made never to leave the house, I fear you cannot overcome."
"Does it spring—forgive me if I go beyond the bounds of discretion, but this mystery is driving me mad—does it spring from that past attachment you have almost acknowledged?"
She drooped her head and his heart misgave him. Why should he hurt both these women when his whole feeling towards them was one of kindness and love?
"Pardon me," he pleaded. "I withdraw the question; I had no right to put it."
"Thank you," said she, and looked away from him towards the distant prospect of hill and valley lying before them.
He stood revolving the matter in his disturbed mind.
"I should have been glad to have been the means of happiness to your sister and yourself. Such seclusion as you have imposed upon yourselves seems unnecessary, but if it must be, and this garden wall is destined to be the boundary of your world, it would have been a great pleasure to me to have brought into it some freshness from the life which lies beyond it. But it is destined not to be."
The sad expression in her face changed into one of wistfulness.
"Then you are not coming any more?" said she.
He caught his breath. There was disappointment in her tones and this could mean nothing but regret, and regret meant the loss of something which might have been hope. She felt, then, that he might have won her sister if he had been more patient.