"Yes, I would. If I live to be an old man, I shall never love again as I have loved, and do love, you."
"Yet you are always meeting Blanche; you are always with her. Only this very morning I found you both together in the corridor in earnest conversation."
"It was quite by accident we met; I had no idea she was there."
"She was speaking to you of me?"
"She said something about your manner towards Gore the night previous. It was something very kind, I remember, but it angered me to think any one had noticed you, though in my heart I knew it must be so. It was too palpable. She meant nothing hurtful."
"The wretch! 'Duke, listen to me and believe me. If I had not felt positive that note," moving a little nearer and laying my fingers upon it, "was the one I saw with her, I would never have acted towards Mark Gore as I did last night. But I felt wounded and cut to the heart, and tried to torture you as I was being tortured. It was foolish, wicked of me, I know, but it made no one so miserable as myself."
"But then—the rink." He speaks very quietly now, but he has come off the table, and is standing before me, one hand resting on it very close to mine, but not touching. I am gazing earnestly into his face with large, wistful eyes.
"It was the same longing for revenge made me go there—nothing else. I had tried to make up with you by asking you to take me to the rink in the evening, but you would not meet my advances, and answered me very cruelly." My lips tremble. "Your words restored all my anger. I was determined to show you I could go there without your permission. Sir Mark was on the spot, and asked me to go with him; it was all the same to me whom I went with, so long as I could defy you, and I agreed to accompany him—not, as you thought, because I wished to be with him, but only to vex you. I thought of no one but you. It would not trouble me if I never saw Mark Gore again. You believe me, 'Duke? I never told you a wilful lie, did I?" Two heavy tears long gathering roll down my cheeks.
"Never," replies he, hoarsely.
Silence follows his last word. We stand very near, yet separate gazing into each other's eyes. Presently, impulsively, his hand mores, and closes firmly upon mine. For an instant longer we gaze, and then I am in his arms, crying as if my heart would break.