She interrupted him hastily, with a look almost of fear in her eyes, as she put her hand affectionately on his arm.
“Look here, Godwin,” she began hurriedly. “I know what you’re going to say; but you mustn’t say it. It’s of no use pretending things to you, for you notice everything. Well, and you know I love Rees, and I’m not ashamed of it—no, not a bit,” she added, raising her blushing face fearlessly to his. “He has faults, I know, but there is enough good in him to love, and I do love him. And if he marries any other girl I shall never marry at all; but if he ever marries me, even if he were to be always cross and cold to me, as he has been lately, and if he were to lose all his handsomeness and brightness, and be miserable, and old, and dull, I should be happier as his wife than as the wife of the best man that ever lived.”
“Oh, of course; I don’t doubt it. A good character in a man is a scarecrow which would frighten any woman away.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Yes, I do, unfortunately. I always had a secret belief that girls were idiots. Now it’s an open belief. That’s all.”
Deborah rose, and leaned over the balustrade, against which Godwin was kicking his heels and knocking off pieces of the mouldering stone.
“I can’t help it, Godwin,” she said, with a sigh.
“And I can’t help being just as fond of you as if you were a woman of sense,” said he, with another sigh. “And the worst of it is, that loving you has reduced me to your own level. For I know that there isn’t any hope for me, and that all the same I shall go on hoping, so that, without any fault on your side or my side, you will be the bane of my life.”
“Oh, Godwin, how can you say such dreadful things?” said the girl, with a scared face.
“You will forget them, and everything else—as soon as Rees comes in,” said Godwin, bitterly.