"Yes," said Fitz; "I have been longing for this opportunity for some time. Miss Mildmay, I am a bad hand at speaking what I mean, but you know I mean all I say. You know that, though I'm a poor, good-for-nothing wretch who oughtn't to be allowed to breathe the same air with one so good and clever as you, but you know that I love you——"
Violet's face grew pale and very sad and mournful.
She raised her hand to stop him, but Fitz had made the plunge, and now, like all nervous people, was reckless.
"Don't stop me, Miss Mildmay; let me go on and say my say. I've kept it within my bosom so long that I feel bursting with it. I love you with all my heart, and no man, let him be as clever as he may, can do more; and if I'm not worthy of you—which I am not—I am sure no one else is. Violet, look at me a little more kindly, you look so pale and sorrowful. Can—cannot you love me—only a little—just enough to say that you will be my wife?"
Violet turned her pale, sad face to him.
"Lord Boisdale—I—how can I answer you? You know that I have no love to give. It was thrown with all my hopes in the sea; that sea which breaks beneath those awful cliffs at Penruddie. You see I can speak calmly. I can look back at that dreadful past bravely and without shame! I am not ashamed to say that I have no heart for anything but the memory of a vanished past."
There was a slight stir behind the curtain, but the speaker did not notice it.
"But," said Fitz, "you will not spend your life in utter mourning, you will not sacrifice your own happiness and my life to such a shadow as that memory——"
"It is no shadow to me," said Violet, softly, sadly, her voice dreamily distinct and low, her eyes fixed as if gazing upon something very far off. "Oh, no! I see it all, day and night, I hear his last words—the man I loved—with the roar of the sea upon the shore. I see that past life of mine ever, day and night, and I am wedded to it. You see," she said with a start, and evidently arousing from her reverie, and remembering, "that it is useless to ask me for love. You would not have me without, Lord Boisdale?"
"I would," said Fitz, his eyes filled with tears. "Violet, dear Violet, you need some one to watch over and guard you—you need some one who could and would devote his life to recalling the smile and the sunlight to yours. I am willing, I am anxious. Confide in me, Violet; trust yourself to me. My love asks for nothing at your hands but yourself and the right to guard you. Oh, Violet, I have loved you so long—I—I would have died for you."