"Oh, my lord, this is wrong!" she cried.
"Mowbray's wish makes wrong right," he replied. "What do you fear,—the man who loves you to distraction?"
Resolutely she fixed her eyes on his, striving to read therein, beyond the disarray of his senses, the true thought which animated him.
"You love me? You have already said the same thing to twenty others,—to Bella Vereker, for instance!"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
"I have never owned a second love! Neither she, nor any one else. You are my first love, and you shall be the only one!"
"I do not believe you. You are not telling me truth."
"Certainly I am," he exclaimed. "You shall be Lady Mowbray in the sight of God and man, with the reversion of the office which my mother holds at court."
This was no illusion! Esther began to weaken, vanity being in reality her vulnerable point.