"And you declined?"
"Yes, firmly and decisively. Perhaps it was wrong."
"Go back, then, at once—don't lose a moment, lest they should think of another man whom they can put in your place!"
"What!—what!—what!" he cried, jealously, "you wish to get rid of me like that."
"No—to go with you—share your life and labours there—be happy with you!"
"Mattie!—what does this mean?"
He held her at arm's length, and looked into her tear-dimmed eyes; he read the truth at last there, and, though unable to account for it, he folded his stricken daughter to his heart, and even wept with her. A man who had known little of earth's romance, or of the tenderness of life, and yet who understood it, now it was face to face with him, and could appreciate the loneliness of her whose life had become linked with his own.
"So," he said, at last, "you do not—you do not love Sidney well enough to become his wife?"
"Yes, I do. I love him too well ever to make him unhappy by becoming so, and standing between him and one he loves so much better than me. Some day I will tell you the whole story—explain it more minutely—you will spare me now, and keep my secret ever?"
"Ever," he responded.