"By what right should I?"
"Hungry for food I am," he says, "but I have another kind of hunger upon me which makes me regardless of that."
"Indeed!" she exclaims, with a pretty gesture of surprise.
"Nelly, you are merciless. You see that I am starving of love for you, and you systematically----"
She stays to hear no more, and gliding from him, passes into the house. But he, stung by her avoidance of him, steps swiftly after her, and before she is aware of his presence, stands with her in the sick chamber, where Lady Temple lies sleeping.
Within this man is working the instinct of our common nature. The more difficult to win becomes the prize--without question of its worth: the measure of difficulty gauges that--the more ardent is he in its pursuit, and the greater value it assumes. And being piqued in this instance, all the forces of his intellect come to his aid.
And Nelly? Well, loving him already, she loves him the more because of his persistence, and because of the value he by his recklessness appears to place upon her.
"O Mr. Temple," she whispers, deeply agitated, "how can you so compromise me? Go, for Heaven's sake, before she wakes!'
"On one condition," he answers, lowering his voice to the pitch of hers; "that you meet me by the brook in an hour from this."
"Anything--anything!--but go!"