"Has she?" sneered he. "She is not always the most open or reliable person in the world!"
Molly reddened. She perceived the impertinence of the tone; and her temper was none of the coolest. But she mastered herself and gained courage by so doing.
"You should not speak so of the person you profess to wish to have for your wife. But putting all that aside, you have some letters of hers that she wishes to have back again."
"I daresay."
"And that you have no right to keep."
"No legal, or no moral right? which do you mean?"
"I do not know; simply you have no right at all, as a gentleman, to keep a girl's letters when she asks for them back again, much less to hold them over her as a threat."
"I see you do know all, Miss Gibson," said he, changing his manner to one of more respect. "At least she has told you her story from her point of view, her side; now you must hear mine. She promised me as solemnly as ever woman—"
"She was not a woman, she was only a girl, barely sixteen."
"Old enough to know what she was doing; but I'll call her a girl if you like. She promised me solemnly to be my wife, making the one stipulation of secrecy, and a certain period of waiting; she wrote me letters repeating this promise, and confidential enough to prove that she considered herself bound to me by such an implied relation. I don't give in to humbug—I don't set myself up as a saint—and in most ways I can look after my own interests pretty keenly; you know enough of her position as a penniless girl, and at that time, with no influential connections to take the place of wealth, and help me on in the world, it was as sincere and unworldly a passion as ever man felt; she must say so herself. I might have married two or three girls with plenty of money; one of them was handsome enough, and not at all reluctant."