"It is not that," she says. "But—do you forget?"
"Forget!" he asks, patiently, gently, though his eyes are burning with impetuous eagerness.
"Do you forget who I am—who you are?" she says, faintly.
"I forget everything except that you are to me the most lovely and precious of creatures on God's earth," he says, passionately. Then, with a touch of his characteristic pride, "What need have I to remember anything else, Stella?"
"But I have," she said. "Oh yes, it is for me to remember. I cannot—I ought not to forget. It is for me to remember. I am only Stella Etheridge, an artist's niece, a nobody—an insignificant girl, and you—oh, Lord Leycester!"
"And I?" he says, as if ready to meet her fairly at every point.
"And you!"—she looks around—"you are a nobleman; will be the lord of all this beautiful place—of all that you were showing me the other day. You should not, ought not to tell me that—that—what you have told me."
He bent over her, and his hand closed on her arm with a masterful caressing touch.
"You mean that because I am what I am—that because I am rich I am to be made poor; because I have so much—too much, that the one thing on earth which would make the rest worth having is to be denied me."
He laughed almost fiercely.