"Why so? Why do you say it? Why do you torment me? Why do you banish me at once, and tell me that I must go home a wretched, miserable man? Why?—why?—why?
"Because, my lord—"
"I can give a reason,—a good reason,—a reason which I cannot oppose, though it must be fatal to me unless I can remove it; a reason to which I must succumb if necessary, but to which, Marion, I will not succumb at once. If you say that you cannot love me that will be a reason."
If it were necessary that she should tell him a lie, she must do so. It would have been pleasant if she could have made him understand that she would be content to love him on condition that he would be content to leave her. That she should continue to love him, and that he should cease to love her,—unless, perhaps, just a little,—that had been a scheme for the future which had recommended itself to her. There should be a something left which should give a romance to her life, but which should leave him free in all things. It had been a dream, in which she had much trusted, but which, while she listened to the violence of his words, she acknowledged to herself to be almost impossible. She must tell the lie;—but at the moment it seemed to her that there might be a middle course. "I dare not love you," she said.
"Dare not love me, Marion? Who hinders you? Who tells you that you may not? Is it your father?"
"No, my lord, no."
"It is Mrs. Roden."
"No, my lord. This is a matter in which I could obey no friend, no father. I have had to ask myself, and I have told myself that I do not dare to love above my station in life."
"I am to have that bugbear again between me and my happiness?"
"Between that and your immediate wishes;—yes. Is it not so in all things? If I,—even I,—had set my heart upon some one below me, would not you, as my friend, have bade me conquer the feeling?"