CHAPTER XI.
AN IMPETUOUS AVOWAL.
"I love you!"
Leslie draws her hands from his grasp, and stands with averted face, her bosom heaving, her breath coming with difficulty.
It is so sudden, so swift, this declaration, that she is overwhelmed. The heart of a pure-minded, innocent girl is not unlike a fortress. It withstands many an attack, and is able to repulse the besiegers until the one comes who cries "Surrender!" and at the sound of his voice, before some nameless magic in his presence, her strength goes, the gate is thrown wide open, and the conqueror marches in.
Leslie had been calm and self-possessed enough when Ralph Duncombe was pleading his passionate love, and was able to withstand his urgent prayer, but to Yorke she can find nothing to say; she can only stand with downcast eyes, her heart beating fast, and the gates beginning to open!
He takes her hand, but again she draws it from him, and sinking on to the trunk of a fallen tree, keeps her face, her eyes, from him.
"You are angry?" he says, his usually light and careless voice deep and earnest enough now. "Well, I deserve that. I—I ought not to have told you so suddenly. But——," he leans against a tree close beside her, and looks down at her—"but—well, I couldn't help it. I was going away this morning." His heart gives a little quiver. "I was going away from Portmaris—and from you. I've been thinking of you all night, and I'd decided that that was the best thing to do. It's sudden and—and startling to you, Leslie—Miss Lisle—but it doesn't seem so to me. You see, I suppose I have been getting to love you ever since I saw you on the beach; that's not long ago, I dare say you'll say, but it seems a long time to me—months, ages."
It is almost as if her own heart were speaking, it is just as she has felt. She listens in a kind of amazement at the subtle sympathy between them.
"I have thought of nothing else but you since I saw you. I know that I shall be the happiest man in the world if—if you'll let me go on loving you, and try to love me a little in return, and the most wretched beggar in existence if—if you can't."