"Are you sure?" persists he. "Afterwards you may regret——"
"Oh, no!" says she, shaking her head. "Mr. Hardinge will not be the one to cause me regret."
"Still, think——"
"Think! Do you imagine I have not been thinking?" cries she, with sudden passion. "Do you imagine I do not know why you plead his cause so eloquently? You want to get rid of me. You are tired of me. You always thought me heartless, about my poor father even, and unloving, and—hateful, and——"
"Not heartless; what have I done, Perpetua, that you should say that?"
"Nothing. That is what I detest about you. If you said outright what you were thinking of me, I could bear it better."
"But my thoughts of you. They are——" He pauses. What are they? What are his thoughts of her at all hours, all seasons? "They are always kind," says he, lamely, in a low tone, looking at the carpet. That downward glance condemns him in her eyes—to her it is but a token of his guilt towards her.
"They are not!" says she, with a little stamp of her foot that makes the professor jump. "You think of me as a cruel, wicked, worldly girl, who would marry anyone to gain position."
Here her fury dies away. It is overcome by something stronger. She trembles, pales, and finally bursts into a passion of tears that have no anger in them, only intense grief.
"I do not," says the professor, who is trembling too, but whose utterance is firm. "Whatever my thoughts are, your reading of them is entirely wrong."