"Since you will have it out,—since I must speak here, I own that what you say is literally true; that when I was a neglected girl of sixteen, you—whom I believed to be a friend, lent me money at my need, and made me give you a promise of marriage."
"Made you!" said he, laying an emphasis on the first word.
Cynthia turned scarlet. "'Made' is not the right word, I confess. I liked you then—you were almost my only friend—and, if it had been a question of immediate marriage, I daresay I should never have objected. But I know you better now; and you have persecuted me so of late, that I tell you once for all (as I have told you before, till I am sick of the very words), that nothing shall ever make me marry you. Nothing! I see there's no chance of escaping exposure and, I daresay, losing my character, and I know losing all the few friends I have."
"Never me," said Molly, touched by the wailing tone of despair that Cynthia was falling into.
"It is hard," said Mr. Preston. "You may believe all the bad things you like about me, Cynthia, but I don't think you can doubt my real, passionate, disinterested love for you."
"I do doubt it," said Cynthia, breaking out with fresh energy. "Ah! when I think of the self-denying affection I have seen—I have known—affection that thought of others before itself—"
Mr. Preston broke in at the pause she made. She was afraid of revealing too much to him.
"You do not call it love which has been willing to wait for years—to be silent while silence was desired—to suffer jealousy and to bear neglect, relying on the solemn promise of a girl of sixteen—for solemn say flimsy, when that girl grows older. Cynthia, I have loved you, and I do love you, and I won't give you up. If you will but keep your word, and marry me, I'll swear I'll make you love me in return."
"Oh, I wish—I wish I'd never borrowed that unlucky money, it was the beginning of it all. Oh, Molly, I have saved and scrimped to repay it, and he won't take it now; I thought if I could but repay it, it would set me free."
"You seem to imply you sold yourself for twenty pounds," he said. They were nearly on the common now, close to the protection of the cottages, in very hearing of their inmates; if neither of the other two thought of this, Molly did, and resolved in her mind to call in at one of them, and ask for the labourer's protection home; at any rate his presence must put a stop to this miserable altercation.