"What do I want?" he repeated.
"Yes, just that—neither more nor less—what do you want? I own you have me in your power, I own that you hold a secret of mine. What is to be its price? I cannot buy your silence with money. You are a gentleman, a man of honor, having my fair name in your power—what shall you charge me for keeping it? I am anxious to know the price men exact for such secrets as those. You wooed me and won me, after your own honorable fashion—what are you going to exact now as the price of your love and my mad folly? I was vain, foolish, untruthful, but, after all, I was an innocent girl when you knew me first. What shall be the price of my innocence? Oh, noble descendant of noble men—oh, noble heritor of a noble race. Speak—let me hear!"
Her taunts stung him almost to fury; his face grew livid with rage; yet, the more insolent she, the more deeply he loved her; the more scornful she, the deeper and wilder grew his worship of her.
"I will tell you the price," he said; "I will make you my wife. Consent to marry me, and I will swear to you, by heaven itself, that I will keep your secret faithfully, loyally, until I die."
"I cannot marry you," she replied; "I do not love you. I cannot help it, if you are angry. I do not even like you. I should be most wretched and miserable with you, for I loathe you. I will never be your wife."
"All those," he replied, slowly, "are objections that you must try to overcome."
"What if I tell you I love some one else?" she said.
"I should pity him, really pity him, from the depths of my heart; but, all the same, I should say you must be my wife!"
She longed to tell him that she loved and meant to marry Earle, but she was afraid even to mention his name.
"I shall conquer all your objections in time," he said. "It is nothing to me that you say you dislike me; it is even less that you say you like another."