"Wish! What business have you to ask after my wishes? But you know what my wishes are very well. I will not pretend to keep them in the dark. She came to my house, and I soon learned to desire that she should be my wife. If I know what love is, I loved her. If I know what love is, I do love her still. She is all the world to me. I have no diamonds to care for; I have no rich mines to occupy my heart; I am not eager in the pursuit of wealth. I had lived a melancholy, lonely life till this young woman had come to my table,—till I had felt her sweet hand upon mine,—till she had hovered around me, covering everything with bright sunshine. Then I asked her to be my wife;—and she told me of you."
"She told you of me?"
"Yes; she told me of you—of you who might then have been dead, for aught she knew. And when I pressed her, she said that she would think of you always."
"She said so?"
"Yes; that she would think of you always. But she did not say that she would always love you. And in the same breath she promised to be my wife. I was contented,—and yet not quite contented. Why should she think of you always? But I believed that it would not be so. I thought that if I were good to her, I should overcome her. I knew that I should be better to her than you would be."
"Why should I not be good to her?"
"There is an old saying of a young man's slave and an old man's darling. She would at any rate have been my darling. It might be that she would have been your slave."
"My fellow-workman in all things."
"You think so now; but the man always becomes the master. If you grovelled in the earth for diamonds, she would have to look for them amidst the mud and slime."
"I have never dreamed of taking her to the diamond-fields."