'Nay, it is yours by every right. By that which makes it unspeakably precious to me to give you my very best and dearest, and by a better right of your own, of affection,' he said, eagerly.
She gave a little cry.
'Don't start,' he said. 'Perhaps I ought not to have said so, but when one watches with feelings such as mine, one sees——.'
She leant back, hiding her face, and crying quietly but unreservedly.
'If he had been like most men,' said Lance, 'if he had not made his whole life a sacrifice and had ever let himself out, I fully believe he would have given you the right. I felt and knew he had never been so near caring for any one.'
She looked up with glowing face, and moist eyes, and tried to say something, but could only utter 'No! It would be too—too much to dare to think so.'
And as she thought of that interview, she wept more than before, though they were scarcely sad tears. Lance longed for the right to soothe her, but only durst lay his hand on the back of her chair. 'If anything could make you more dear to me,' he said, bending over her, 'it would be this! Nobody else so revered that great heart. I thought I knew him best, but every day at Bexley brings up so many tokens of what he was that I seem to have only known him by half.'
'Tell me.'
And Lance told many an instance of the doings of Felix's right hand unknown to his left, and she listened with all her soul. It was more than half an hour before she said, 'Then are you all alone?'
'With Mrs. Froggatt for the present, but I have decided on nothing permanently. My dear brother told me I need not hold on, nor do I think I can without a ray of hope.'