“Lyle, you are mocking me,” said Olive, sadly.
“Mocking you! It is very cruel to tell me so,” and he turned away with an expression of deep pain.
Olive began to wake from the bewilderment into which his words had thrown her. But she could not realise the possibility of Lyle Derwent's loving her, his senior by some years, many years older than he in heart; pale, worn, deformed. For the sense of personal defect which had haunted her throughout her life was present still. But when she looked again at Lyle, she regretted having spoken to him so harshly.
“Forgive me,” she said. “All this is so strange; you cannot really mean it. It is utterly impossible that you can love me. I am old, compared with you; I have no beauty, nay, even more than that”—— here she paused, and her colour sensitively rose.
“I know what you would say,” quickly added the young man. “But I think nothing of it—nothing! To me you are, as I said, like an angel. I have come here to-day to tell you so; to ask you to share my riches, and teach me to deserve them. Dearest Miss Rothesay, be not only my friend, but—my wife?”
There was no doubting him now. The strong passion within gave him dignity and manhood. Olive scarcely recognised in the earnest wooer before her, the poesy-raving, blushing, sentimental Lyle. Great pain came over her. She had never dreamed of one trial—that of being loved by another as hopelessly as she herself loved.
“You do not answer, Miss Rothesay? What does your silence mean? That I have presumed too much! You think me a boy; a foolish, romantic boy; but I can love you, for all that, with my whole heart and soul.”
“Oh, Lyle, why talk to me in this way? You do not know how deeply it grieves me.”
“It grieves you—you do not love me, then? Well,” he added, sighing, “I could hardly expect it at once; but you will grant me time, you will let me try to prove myself worthy of you—you will give me hope?”
Olive shook her head mournfully. “Lyle, dear Lyle, forget all this. It is a mere dream; it will pass, I know it will. You will choose some young girl who is suited for you, and to whom you will make a good and happy husband.”