“Say, rather, your Ladyship had changed yours,” said he, with a cold smile,—“a privilege you are not wont to deny yourself.”
“I might have exercised it oftener in life with advantage,” replied she, still holding her head bent over the embroidery frame.
“Don't you think that your Ladyship and I are old friends enough to speak without innuendo?”
“If we speak at all,” said she, with a low but calm accent.
“True, that is to be thought of,” rejoined he, with an unmoved quietude of voice. “Being in a manner prepared for a change in your Ladyship's sentiments towards me—”
“Sir!” said she, interrupting, and as suddenly raising her face, which was now covered with a deep blush.
“I trust I have said nothing to provoke reproof,” said Linton, coldly. “Your Ladyship is well aware if my words be not true. I repeat it, then,—your sentiments are changed towards me, or—the alteration is not of my choosing—I was deceived in the expression of them when last we met.”
“It may suit your purpose, sir, but it can scarcely conform to the generosity of a gentleman, to taunt me with acceding to your request for a meeting. If any other weakness can be alleged against me, pray let me hear it.”
“When we last met,” said Linton, in a voice of lower and deeper meaning than before, “we did so that I might speak, and you hear, the avowal of a passion which for years has filled my heart—against which I have struggled and fought in vain—to stifle which I have plunged into dissipations that I detested, and followed ambitions I despised—to obliterate all memory of which I would stoop to crime itself, rather than suffer on in the hopeless misery I must do.”
“I will hear no more of this,” said she, pushing back the work-table, and preparing to rise.