“Miss Vanley, I find it difficult to speak to you to-night, almost impossible to say what I feel it is my duty to myself, and to you, should be said.” His voice was very low and grave, and his eyes, as they turned to her, were full of sad earnestness. “I know what it costs you to talk with me thus—how much you wish to rid yourself of me.”
“Why should I?” she said, though she knew.
“Because you feel that I have forfeited your esteem, that I have acted dishonorably. You will think still worse of me when I tell you that I cannot, that I dare not explain my conduct to you the other day—that I am compelled to suffer the continuance of your contempt and scorn because I am unable to tell you all, to lay my heart bare to you. But it is so,” he sighed. “I asked you to forgive me when we parted in the wood. Is it possible that you may learn to do so? Yours is a sweet and pitying nature; extend your mercy to a man who needs it very badly.”
The words, the tone, went straight to her heart.
“I—I forgive you,” she said, almost in a whisper.
He made no response for a moment, and the silence was more eloquent than words.
“Let me speak one more word,” he said.
She made a slight gesture of assent.
“Lord Granville has gone—left England, you know. Will you believe that I broke as well as I could the sorrow your refusal cost him?”
“You—you did the best for him, your friend,” she said, faintly. “Yes, I can believe that.”