"You are in love?" she says, kindly, but rather uncertainly, not being able at the moment to call to mind any tender glances of his cast at Molly or any suspicious situations that might confirm her in her fancy.
"Need you ask?" says Lowry, taking her hand, feeling still further emboldened by the gentleness with which she has received his first advance. "Have not all these months—nay, this year past—taught you so much?"
"'This year past?'" Cecil repeats, honestly at sea, and too much surprised by the heat of his manner to grasp at once the real meaning of his words. Though I think a second later a faint inkling of it comes to her, because she releases her hand quickly from his clasp, and her voice takes a sharper tone. "I do not understand you," she says, "Take care you understand—yourself."
But the warning comes too late. Lowry, bent on his own destruction, goes on vehemently:
"I do—too well. Have I not had time to learn it?" he says, passionately. "Have I not spent every day, every hour, in thoughts of you? Have I not lived in anticipation of our meeting? While you, Cecil, surely you, too, were glad when we were together. The best year I have ever known has been this last, in which I have grown to love you."
"Pray cease," says Cecil, hurriedly, stepping back and raising her hand imperiously. "What can you mean? You must be out of your senses to speak to me like this."
Although angry, she is calm, and, indeed, scarcely cares to give way to indignation before Lowry, whom she has always looked upon with great kindness and rather in the light of a boy. She is a little sorry for him, too, that he should have chosen to make a fool of himself with her, who, she cannot help feeling, is his best friend. For to all the moodiness and oddity of his nature she has been singularly lenient, bearing with him when others would have lost all patience. And this is her reward. For a full minute Lowry seems confounded. Then, "I must indeed be bereft of reason," he says, in a low, intense voice, "if I am to believe that you can receive like this the assurance of my love. It cannot be altogether such a matter of wonder—my infatuation for you—as you would have me think, considering how you"—in a rather choked tone—"led me on."
"'Led you on'! My dear Mr. Lowry, how can you talk so foolishly? I certainly thought I knew you very well, and"—docketing off each item on her fingers—"I let you run my messages now and then; and I danced with you; and you sent me the loveliest flowers in London or out of it; and you were extremely kind to me on all occasions; but then so many other men were kind also, that really beyond the flowers,"—going back to her second finger,—"(which were incomparably finer than those I ever received from any one else), I don't see that you were more to me than the others."
"Will you not listen to me? Will you not even let me plead my cause?"
"Certainly not, considering what a cause it is. You must be mad."