He was drawing closer to her, confident in his powers of fascination, but she pushed him from her.
‘Monsieur de Courcelles, I am surprised at you! I am surprised now to think that I should ever have believed in you, or thought the engagement you entered into with me anything but a blind for your more serious intentions in another quarter.’
He started backward with astonishment, little dreaming that she knew the whole of Maraquita’s sad history.
‘I don’t understand you,’ he gasped. ‘I have never been engaged to any woman but yourself. I don’t desire to marry any other woman. I came here to-day with the express purpose of asking you to condone the past, and marry me as soon as may be convenient to you.’
A few weeks before, how her heart would have beat at such a proposal, how her cheek would have flamed assent, and her humid eyes have sought his with grateful love. But now she sprang aside as if he had insulted her, and flashed defiance on him to repeat the offence.
‘How dare you?’ she panted. ‘How dare you speak to me of marriage—you, who have treated me with scorn and contumely?’
‘But I have acknowledged my error, Lizzie. Surely you are not a woman to resent a fault for ever. You used to love me, I am sure of that.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ she interposed hastily. ‘I loved something, I know,—some creature conjured up by my imagination, but not the man of flesh and blood I see before me. For I did not know you then, and no one can love an unknown person.’
‘Lizzie, you are very hard upon me! I am not perfect, any more than other men, but I don’t know what I can have done to merit such bitter taunts from you. At all events, try and know me now as the man who loves you, and entreats you to marry him. Lizzie, be my wife! Mr Courtney is aware of our attachment, and has made a very generous offer of assistance, if we marry each other. If your affection for me was ever true, you will not refuse me now.’
‘My affection for you was true,’ replied Lizzie, looking him full in the face; ‘and all the more does that make me say I will never marry you now. Never! Not if there was not another man in the world.’