"Not Lord!"
"Then I shall call you Plantagenet;—only it sounds so horribly historical. Why are you not Thomas or Abraham? But if it will please you to hear me say so, I am ready to acknowledge that nothing in all my life ever came near to the delight I have in your love." Hereupon he almost succeeded in getting his arm round her waist. But she was strong, and seized his hand and held it. "And I speak no rhapsodies. I tell you a truth which I want you to know and to keep in your heart,—so that you may be always, always sure of it."
"I never will doubt it."
"But that marrying will ye nill ye, will not suit me. There is so much wanted for happiness in life."
"I will do all that I can."
"Yes. Even though it be hazardous, I am willing to trust you. If you were as other men are, if you could do as you please as lower men may do, I would leave father and mother and my own country,—that I might be your wife. I would do that because I love you. But what will my life be here, if they who are your friends turn their backs upon me? What will your life be, if, through all that, you continue to love me?"
"That will all come right."
"And what will your life be, or mine," she said, going on with her own thoughts without seeming to have heard his last words, "if in such a condition as that you did not continue to love me?"
"I should always love you."
"It might be very hard:—and if once felt to be hard, then impossible. You have not looked at it as I have done. Why should you? Even with a wife that was a trouble to you—"