“You are very kind, Mr. Wilson,” she said, turning a quick glance upon him. “What object have you in this?”
“Nothing but your good,” he replied, in his slow, steady way. “I have your welfare so deeply at heart that I would run any risk or do any deed to aid you.”
“Indeed!” she said. “I did not know I had so warm a friend in you.”
“You did know it,” he answered, abruptly. “You trifle with me now. You affect to forget our past intercourse, to forget that I opened the secret of my heart to you on a former occasion.”
“Yes, I remember your making a goose of yourself by making love to me when I was but a child,” she replied, with a curl of the lip. “I laughed at you then as I should laugh now at anything ridiculous.”
“I loved you then, as I love you now,” he said earnestly. “I forbore to press my claim when your fancy was turned elsewhere. I believe it was but a girl’s fancy that drew you to John Elkton. That dream is past now. You are a woman, and are free. I have a right now to press the love that I have nursed in silence till it has grown too strong to suppress. I have a claim on you that gives me the right to speak of my affection. I love you. You are or will be free. May I not offer my sincere affection? May I not lay claim to this dear hand? I who have so long loved you in silence and hopelessness?”
He attempted to take her hand, which she quickly withdrew. She still leaned upon her chair, with pallid face and set, compressed lips.
“When I am free I will let you know,” she said, with a touch of sarcasm. “It would be well for you to suppress this sudden passion till then. I do not imagine that you will die young from the pangs of unrequited love. I despise you too much to give a serious answer to such an unmanly and insulting suit.”
She walked with a queenly step across the room toward the door.
“Very well, then,” he cried, angrily. “You accept the other alternative. I will at once inform Mr. Leonard and the officers of what I have learned. Before this time to-morrow John Elkton shall be the tenant of a prison, and shall know that you have consigned him there.”