One night after they had been sitting together, and Gowan had just left the room with Phil, Dolly glanced up from her work and saw her lover looking at her with a face so pale and wretched that she was thrown into a passion of fear.
She tossed her work away in a second, and, making one of her little rushes at him, was caught in his arms and half suffocated. She knew the instant she caught sight of his face what he was suffering, though perhaps she did not know the worst.
“Oh, why will you?” she cried out, in tears, all at once. “It is cruel! You are as pale as death, and I know—I know so well what it means.”
“Tell me you will never forget what we have been to each other,” he said, when he could speak; “tell me you don't care for that fellow,—tell me you love me, Dolly, tell me you love me.”
She did not hesitate a moment; she had never flirted with Griffith in her life, and she knew him too well to try him when he wore that desperate, feverish look of longing in his eyes. She burst into an impetuous sob, and clung to him with both hands.
“I love you with all my soul,” she said. “I will never let you give me up; and as to forgetting, I might die, but I could never forget. Care for Ralph Gowan! I love you, Griffith, I love you!”
“And you don't regret?” he said, piteously. “Oh, Dolly, just think of what he could give you; and then think of our hopeless dreams about miserable six-roomed houses and cheap furniture.”
“You will make me hate him,” cried Dolly, her gust of love and pity making her fierce. “I don't want anything anybody could give me. I only want you, dear old fellow,—darling old fellow,” holding him fast, as if she would never let him go, and shedding a shower of impassioned, tender tears. “Oh, my darling, only wait until I am your own wife, and see how happy I will be, and how happy I will make you,—for I can make you happy,—and see how I will work in our little home for your sake, and how content I will be with a little. Oh, what must I do to show you how I love you! Do you think I could have cared for Ralph Gowan all these years as I have cared for you? No indeed; but I shall care for you forever, and I would wait for you a thousand years if I might only be your wife, and die in your arms at the end of it.”
And she believed every word she said, too, and would have been willing to lay down her young life to prove it, extravagant as it may all sound to the discreet. And she quite believed, too, that she could never have so loved any other man than this unlucky, jealous, tempestuous one; but I will take the liberty of saying that this was a mistake, for, being an impassioned, heart-ruled, unworldly young person, it is quite likely that if Ralph Gowan had stood in Mr. Griffith Donne's not exactly water-tight shoes, she would have clung to him quite as faithfully, and believed in his perfections quite as implicitly, and quite as scornfully would have depreciated the merits of his rival; but chance had arranged the matter for her years before, and so Mr. Griffith was the hero.
“Ralph Gowan!” she flung out. “What is Ralph Gowan, or any other man on earth, to me? Did I love him before I knew what love was, and scarcely understood my own heart? Did I grow into a woman loving him and clinging to him and dreaming about him? Have I ever had any troubles in common with him? Did we grow up together, and tell each other all our thoughts and help each other to bear things? Let him travel in the East, if he likes,"—with high and rather inconsistent disdain,—"and let him have ten thousand a year, if he will,—a hundred thousand millions a year wouldn't buy me from you—my own!” In another burst, “Let him ride in his carriage, if he chooses,"—rather, as if such a course would imply the most degraded weakness; but, as I have said before, she was illogical, if affectionate,—"let him ride in his carriage. I would rather walk barefoot through the world with you than ride in a hundred carriages, if every one of them was lined with diamonds and studded with pearls.”