‘What is it, then, that you would swear?’ asked she calmly and even coldly.
‘Swear that I have no hope so high, no ambition so great, as to win your heart.’
‘Indeed! And that other heart that you have won—what is to become of it?’
‘Its owner has recalled it. In fact, it was never in my keeping but as a loan.’
‘How strange! At least, how strange to me this sounds. I, in my ignorance, thought that people pledged their very lives in these bargains.’
‘So it ought to be, and so it would be, if this world were not a web of petty interests and mean ambitions; and these, I grieve to say, will find their way into hearts that should be the home of very different sentiments. It was of this order was that compact with my cousin—for I will speak openly to you, knowing it is her to whom you allude. We were to have been married. It was an old engagement. Our friends—that is, I believe, the way to call them—liked it. They thought it a good thing for each of us. Indeed, making the dependants of a good family intermarry is an economy of patronage—the same plank rescues two from drowning. I believe—that is, I fear—we accepted all this in the same spirit. We were to love each other as much as we could, and our relations were to do their best for us.’
‘And now it is all over?’
‘All—and for ever.’
‘How came this about?’
‘At first by a jealousy about you.’