His face flushed hotly for a moment, but he held her tightly, and his eyes searched hers for the truth.
"Does it pain you to hear that I love you?" he whispered. "Are you angry, sorry? Can you not love me, Stella? Oh, my darling!—let me call you my darling, mine, if only for once, for one short minute! See, you are mine, I hold you in both hands! Be mine for a short minute at least, while you answer me. Are you sorry? Can you not give me a little love in return for all the love I bear you? Cannot you, Stella?"
Panting now, and with the rich color coming and going on her face, she looks this way and that like some wild, timid animal seeking to escape.
"Do not press me, do not force me to speak," she almost moans. "Let me go now."
"No, by Heaven!" he says, almost fiercely. "You shall not, must not go, until you have answered me. Tell me, Stella, is it because I am nothing to you, and you do not like to tell me so? Ah! better the truth at once, hard as it may be to bear, than suspense. Tell me, Stella."
"It—it—is not that," she says, with drooping head.
"What is it, then?" he whispers, and he bends his head to catch her faintly whispered words, so that his lips almost touch her face.
From the drawing-room comes the sound of some one playing; it recalls all the grandeur of the scene, all the high mightiness of the house to which he belongs—of which he is so nearly the head, and it gives her strength.
Slowly she raises her head and looks at him.
There is infinite tenderness, infinite yearning, and suppressed maidenly passion in her eyes.