"I shall never forget you, Miles Tremenhere," she answered, gravely looking up. There was no blush or hesitation: there was only truth, and its ever accompanying fearlessness.
"Do you know, child," he exclaimed almost painfully, as he clasped her hand convulsively, "what you are doing this day? You are bending a strong, stern man, to womanly weakness; you are tearing every other thought from my heart, to engraft yourself there. Minnie, I have dreaded this moment; yet I had not the courage to fly you. I have said every day, 'To-morrow;' and that morrow has never come in which I could quit this neighbourhood."
"Hush!" she cried in alarm, looking round; "I heard a footstep." Her voice trembled with many emotions.
"There's no one here," he answered, scarcely glancing round. "It was perhaps my heart you heard beat; there are footfalls in that—those of remorse for my weakness—those of my mother's spirit deserting me; for I have sworn only to think of her. And yet, Minnie, do you know, amidst all this wild passion to-day, which your word, your utterance of my name, has called forth, I am not sure I truly love you! Were I certain of that, nothing could ever reconcile me to a separation from you. I would strain every nerve of my soul to make you love me; and, loving thus, ask you to be mine—in toil and poverty perhaps—assured that nothing could surpass in misery, separation from each other."
"Is your heart more difficult for you to read, than mine is for myself?" she asked, looking up in child-like confidence. "Mine is an open page, I know——"
"Do not speak what you think you read there, Minnie; hearts are deceitful things, like words in dead tongues: we must search well, to define the real signification of things written there. Love has a counterfeit—passion. If I knew mine, purely, truly yours, worthy of you—or if I knew you truly loved me—there is not that power on earth which should part us!"
"Surely," she whispered, in terror grasping his arm, "there is some one in that archway, yonder—I heard a step!"
"No, 'tis fancy," he replied, looking round; "my earnestness has startled you, poor child—poor child, indeed, if you loved me!—an outcast, a wanderer. Forget all we have been saying, Minnie," he added, sorrowfully; "for be sure of this, if we really love, or are to love, some great event will call that affection to light—prove and hallow it; for it will be based on esteem, else you had not trusted me so far, nor I, been so confident towards you. Come, let us leave this old ruin; you are terrified to-day. I will see you outside of its huge walls, and then we must part; once on your black mare, with old Thomas beside you, you will forget this. Let us go, child; why, you tremble still!" and, more with fatherly care than aught else, he drew her arm beneath his own, and they silently quitted the ruin.
"Now, will you doubt my perspicacity again, Formby?" cried Marmaduke Burton, stepping from beneath the dark archway, and dragging the half alive Juvenal after him. "I told you they met in secret. I wish we could have heard all they said."
"I'm horror-stricken!" shivered Juvenal, with genuine truthfulness. "What is to be done with her?"