"Forget what?"
"Well,—nothing. You need forget nothing," said Lady Laura, "for nothing has been said that need be regretted. Only wish me joy, and all will be pleasant."
"Lady Laura, I do wish you joy, with all my heart,—but that will not make all things pleasant. I came up here to ask you to be my wife."
"No;—no, no; do not say it."
"But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,—as a bewildered idiot."
"I wish to regard you as a dear friend,—both of my own and of my husband," said she, offering him her hand.
"Should I have had a chance, I wonder, if I had spoken a week since?"
"How can I answer such a question, Mr. Finn? Or, rather, I will, answer it fully. It is not a week since we told each other, you to me and I to you, that we were both poor,—both without other means than those which come to us from our fathers. You will make your way;—will make it surely; but how at present could you marry any woman unless she had money of her own? For me,—like so many other girls, it was necessary that I should stay at home or marry some one rich enough to dispense with fortune in a wife. The man whom in all the world I think the best has asked me to share everything with him;—and I have thought it wise to accept his offer."
"And I was fool enough to think that you loved me," said Phineas. To this she made no immediate answer. "Yes, I was. I feel that I owe it you to tell you what a fool I have been. I did. I thought you loved me. At least I thought that perhaps you loved me. It was like a child wanting the moon;—was it not?"
"And why should I not have loved you?" she said slowly, laying her hand gently upon his arm.