"No," she said, with a faint smile; "not ill, at all events not now. I have been rather weak and silly; but I did not expect you yet. I intended to remove all traces of such folly by the time you came. It was fit I should, as I want to talk to you most seriously and soberly."
"Do we not always talk so? did we not the last time I was here--yesterday?"
"Well, generally, perhaps; but not the last time--not yesterday. If I could have thought so, I should have spared myself a night of agony and a morning of remorse."
Geoff's face grew clouded.
"I am sorry for your agony, but much more sorry for your remorse, Miss Dacre," said he.
"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," cried Margaret, passionately, "don't you be angry with me; don't you speak to me harshly, or I shall give way all together! O, I watched every change of your face; and I saw what you thought at once; but indeed, indeed it is not so. My remorse is not for having told you all that I did yesterday; for what else could I do to you who had been to me what you had? My remorse was for what I had done--not for what I had said--for the wretched folly which prompted me to yield to a wheedling tongue, and so ruin myself for ever."
Her tears burst forth again as she said this, and she stamped her foot upon the ground.
"Ruin you for ever, Margaret!" said Geoffrey, stealing his arm round her waist as she still stood by the mantelshelf; "O no, not ruin you, dearest Margaret--"
"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," she interrupted, neither withdrawing from nor yielding to his arm, "have I not reason to say ruin? Can I fail to see that you have taken an interest in me which--which--"
"Which nothing you have told me can alter--which I shall preserve, please God," said Geoff, in all simplicity and sincerity, "to the end of my life."