"That is what I said to myself." Then she paused, and looking into her face he saw that there was a glimmer of a tear in each eye. "One that any girl must love when asked for her love;—because he is so sweet, so good, and so pleasant."
"I know that you are chaffing."
"Then I went on asking myself questions. And is it possible that I, who by all his friends will be regarded as a nobody, who am an American,—with merely human workaday blood in my veins,—that such a one as I should become his wife? Then I told myself that it was not possible. It was not in accordance with the fitness of things. All the dukes in England would rise up against it, and especially that duke whose good-will would be imperative."
"Why should he rise up against it?"
"You know he will. But I will go on with my story of myself. When I had settled that in my mind, I just cried myself to sleep. It had been a dream. I had come across one who in his own self seemed to combine all that I had ever thought of as being lovable in a man—"
"Isabel!"
"And in his outward circumstances soared as much above my thoughts as the heaven is above the earth. And he had whispered to me soft, loving, heavenly words. No;—no, you shall not touch me. But you shall listen to me. In my sleep I could be happy again and not see the barriers. But when I woke I made up my mind. 'If he comes to me again,' I said—'if it should be that he should come to me again, I will tell him that he shall be my heaven on earth,—if,—if,—if the ill-will of his friends would not make that heaven a hell to both of us.' I did not tell you quite all that."
"You told me nothing but that I was to come again in three months."
"I said more than that. I bade you ask your father. Now you have come again. You cannot understand a girl's fears and doubts. How should you? I thought perhaps you would not come. When I saw you whispering to that highly-born well-bred beauty, and remembered what I was myself, I thought that—you would not come."
"Then you must love me."