‘I am not here by accident,’ he added after a lengthened silence; ‘nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday—only yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?’
‘Stay,’ said Rose. ‘You do know all.’
‘All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the subject of our last discourse.’
‘I did.’
‘Not to press you to alter your determination,’ pursued the young man, ‘but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.’
‘The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,’ said Rose firmly. ‘If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night? It is a struggle,’ said Rose, ‘but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.’
‘The disclosure of to-night,’—Harry began.
‘The disclosure of to-night,’ replied Rose softly, ‘leaves me in the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.’
‘You harden your heart against me, Rose,’ urged her lover.
‘Oh Harry, Harry,’ said the young lady, bursting into tears; ‘I wish I could, and spare myself this pain.’