This happened three weeks after the death of Stephen Linton, and during these weeks Herbert Courtland had never once asked to see Ella Linton.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MARRIAGE IS THE PICTURESQUE GATEWAY LEADING TO A COMMONPLACE ESTATE.
So soon as Phyllis Ayrton had returned home, she got a letter from Herbert Courtland, asking her if she would be good enough to grant him an interview. She replied at once that it would please her very much to see him on the following afternoon—she was going to Scotland with her father in a week, if Parliament had risen by that time.
He came to her. She was alone in the drawing room where she had always received him previously.
The servant had scarcely left the room before he had told her he had come to tell her that he loved her—to ask her if he might hope to have some of her love in return.
He had not seated himself, nor had she. They remained standing together in the middle of the room. He had not even retained her hand.
“Why have you come to me—to me?” she asked him. Her face was pale and her lips, when he had been speaking to her, were firmly set.
“I have come to you, not because I am worthy of the priceless gift of your love,” said he, “but because you have taught me not merely to love you—you have taught me what love itself is. You have saved my soul.”