“You shall trifle with me thus no longer; I am no petulant boy, to be repulsed one hour, and caressed into good humour the next. What is the meaning of this estrangement which you have chosen shall spring up between us? Why do you?—but such questions are useless—this shall decide the point—once and for ever:—Do you love me, or do you not?”
For a moment she was silent; then turning her head to avoid his eager scrutinizing glance, she murmured—
“Have we not known each other from childhood, and loved each other always?”
“That is no answer; you only seek to evade my question,” was the angry reply.
He stood for a moment, his lips quivering with emotion, and his hands clenched so tightly that the blood receded from the points of his fingers, leaving them cold and colourless as marble. His companion did not speak, but continued to regard him with a look half-pitying, half-imploring pity. As their eyes met, his mood appeared suddenly to change, and springing to her side, he exclaimed in a voice tremulous with emotion—
“Kate, dearest, why will you thus torture yourself and me? Hear me, dear one; you know I love you better than any created thing—better than my own soul. You say truly, that I have loved you always—with the tender unconscious love of the child, with the happy romantic love of the boy, and, lastly, with the deep, earnest, absorbing passion of mature manhood; and you, Kate, you must—nay, you do love me!”
As he spoke, he drew her gently towards him, and unrepulsed pressed a kiss upon her soft lips. She did not resist or respond to his caress, but suffered her head to rest passively against his shoulder, as he continued—
“I do not inquire—I heed not—what mad schemes you may have dreamed of; but I ask—nay, I implore you, by all you hold sacred to put them away from you, and to wait patiently for a few, a very few short years, until I can claim you for my beloved, my honoured wife. Kate, you will do as I desire?—speak to me, my own love!”
Unheeding his appeal, she remained for a minute silent, while a few tears stole unchecked down her pale cheeks, then rousing herself by an effort, she wiped away the traces of her late emotion, gently removed her cousin’s arm, which still encircled her waist, and drawing herself up, exclaimed—
“This is weakness—folly; I never intended it should have come to this; but I was taken by surprise—unprepared——”