"I want you to promise me not to come here again until I write to you."
"How cruel!"
"No! I am not cruel, Harry, you do not understand; but I must think over all this, I do not see things clearly yet, I must think," she stopped in the middle of the sentence, and an expression of agony passed over her face, as the memory of her secret came to her mind.
"Oh, Mary! don't you love me well enough to trust me yet?" he asked reproachfully.
"It is you who are cruel now. Oh, Harry, you know it is not that. You know how I should like you never to leave me at all, you know that, but...."
"I am cruel! Tears in my poor little pet's eyes too, and I have brought them there by my brutality," and he stooped to kiss her eyelids.
"Harry! Harry! Ah, if you knew what makes me hesitate! If you knew and could help me! But there is no one that I can go to for advice—no one!"
There was a keen anguish in her voice as she uttered these words.
He seized her hands. "Mary, my love, cannot you come to me for advice?"