“I don’t understand you, Rosalie—I—do tell me what you mean!”
“I mean that I have not been frank enough with you, Robert. I have not had the courage,” said Rosalie, in a faltering voice, for she still deeply pitied him.
He did not look like an object of pity, just then; all his countenance suddenly brightened with joy. He seized her hand, exclaiming—“Do I comprehend? Do I hear you right? Do you mean, after all, that you like me a little better than you said you did?”
“No. Oh! Robert, what a sanguine nature yours must be, to interpret every word which is not positive, in your own way. No, Robert! I mean, that I have thoughtlessly accepted all your kind services, knowing full well that I never, never can repay the smallest of them. I mean, too, that I have let you tell me, again and again, of your regard, knowing all the while that I can never, never return it in the way you wish. I have wronged you, by not telling you this with sufficient firmness before!”
“Cruel! cold! hard! heartless!”
“It is my misfortune that I cannot accept you, Robert. My reason is telling me all the time, just as any prudent old lady could tell me—that if I could like you, I should have an enviable lot in life; not because you are wealthy, and all that, of course, Robert, but because I really do know you are—so good, so disinterested, so true, and because your dear mother and sisters are just like you, and I could love them as if they were my own relatives.”
“In mercy, Rosalie, why do you talk to me so, if you never mean to accept me?”
“Why, indeed? Because I cannot reject this kindness, for which I am indeed most sincerely grateful, in any other but the humblest manner, and with every circumstance to assure you, that I feel how much good I reject in rejecting you, Robert. Dear Robert, there is certainly destiny, as well as duty, in these matters; and, well as I like you, I could not love you enough to marry you, if my salvation depended on it; indeed I could not. I am not destined to so easy a life, Robert. I begin to have a foreshadowing that my lot will be a very rough one, Robert; that I shall not be left to bask in the sunshine, but shall have to face and weather the storm.”
“You—you fragile snow-drop! What do you mean now? You meet the storms of life! Has the Planters’ Own Bank broken, or have all the slaves on the plantation run off in a body?”
“Neither one nor the other, Robert. And if I ‘rough it’ in the world, it will be my own free choice.”