“I don’t understand why my marriage would have such terrible consequences, Lady Gwendolyn. One would think that I was a monster in human form.”
And then, in spite of himself, he smiled to think how completely Lady Gwendolyn had turned the tables upon him. He had joined her, intending simply to bid her adieu, in order that he might look once more on the fatal beauty that had stolen his heart away, and if any conversation did take place he certainly pictured himself as the accuser, whereas he had done little else but defend himself, and had only been able to get in his own complaints edgewise.
Decidedly Lady Gwendolyn understood the art, and also the advantage, of carrying the war into the enemy’s country. And yet, though he had seen her in the arms of another man, and knew her to be an unprincipled coquette, how he yearned after her, his mad infatuation increasing as he gazed, until he felt as if he could not give her up were she twenty times worse than she was.
He drew near to her with a look in his eyes no woman can misunderstand even when she sees it for the first time. His lips were trembling with the eager, passionate words that flowed up from his heart; his face was as white as death.
“Gwendolyn,” he said hoarsely, “you must despise me as much as I despise myself, but I cannot let you go.”
The hour of her supreme triumph had come—the hour she had panted for, and longed for even in her dreams. This man, who had resisted her so long, was at her feet now, in spite of himself, and for one moment her victory seemed very sweet.
Then a revulsion of feeling came over her, and she hated him as intensely as she had loved him before. If he despised himself for falling into her power, if he was only in love with her beauty and would still win her for that when he deemed her unworthy of any finer sentiment, her victory was no better really than a defeat.
She drew away from him quickly, and burst into a passion of tears.
“You are right,” she sobbed out; “I do despise you; but I despise myself still more. How horribly I must have lowered myself to inspire such a feeling as you have dared confess. At least, you might have spared me the knowledge, Colonel Dacre, if only because I am of the same sex as your mother.”
“Gwendolyn, you don’t understand me. I am asking you to be my wife.”