"You have heard me," retorts he, coldly, angered to the last degree by the extreme horror and disgust she has evinced at his proposal. He deliberately replaces the precious paper in his pocket, and turns as if to go.
"Oh, stay?" she says, faintly, detaining him both by word and gesture.
He turns to her again.
She covers her eyes with her hands, and tries vainly to decide on what is best for her to do. In all the books she has ever read the young woman placed in her position would not have hesitated at all. As if reared to the situation, she would have thrown up her head, and breathing defiance upon the tempter, would have murmured to the sympathetic air, "Honor above everything," and so, full of dignity, would have moved away from her discomfited companion, her nose high in the air. She would think it a righteous thing that all the world should suffer rather than one tarnish, however slight, should sully the brightness of her fame.
For the first time Mona learns she is not like this well-regulated young woman. She falls lamentably short of such excellence. She cannot bring herself to think the world of those she loves well lost for any consideration whatever. And after all—this horrid condition—it would be over in a moment. And she could run home with the coveted paper, and bathe her face in sweet cold water. And then again she shudders. Could she bathe the remembrance of the insult from her heart?
She presses her hands still closer against her eyes, as though to shut out from her own mind the hatefulness of such a thought. And then, with a fresh effort, she brings herself back once more to the question that lies before her.
Oh, if by this one act of self-sacrifice she could restore the Towers with all its beauty and richness to Nicholas, and—and his mother,—how good a thing it would be! But will Geoffrey ever forgive her? Ah, sure when she explains the matter to him, and tells him how and why she did it, and how her heart bled in the doing of it, he will put his arms round her and pardon her sin. Nay, more, he may see how tender is the longing that compels her to the deed.
She uncovers her eyes, and glances for a bare instant at Rodney. Then once more the heavily-fringed lids close upon the dark-blue eyes, as if to hide the anguish in them, and in a smothered voice she says, with clenched teeth and a face like marble, "Yes, you may kiss me,—if you will."
There is a pause. In shrinking doubt she awaits the moment that shall make him take advantage of her words. But that moment never comes. In vain she waits. At length she lifts her eyes, and he, flinging the parchment at her feet, cries, roughly,—
"There! take it. I can be generous too."