“Let us talk no more about him. Agnes, has my time come yet? I have been wondering for some days past if I should tell you—if I should tell you what I told you on that morning long ago. You know that it was true then; you know that it is true now.”
“Not to-day—I implore of you not to ask me to say the words that you think will make you happy—the words which I know will make me happy.”
“I will not ask you to say one word beyond that, my beloved.”
He had caught her hand and was holding it in both his own, smiling.
She shook her head.
“Do not assume too much,” she cried. “I cannot be happy to-day—oh, it would be heartless for me to be happy while that girl is wretched!”
“Wretched? It cannot be possible that he has turned away from her within a month?” said Sir Percival. “Seven years, not weeks, was the space of time named by him.”
“It was impossible that anything but misery could come of his love for her,” said Agnes. “The misery has come. Poor child! I should be inhuman if I thought of my own happiness to-day while the waters have closed over her head.”
“I do not want another word from you, believe me,” said he. “I am content—more than content—with what you have said to me. There is in my heart nothing but hope. Good-bye.”
He remembered that on the morning when he had told her that he loved her, she had given him her face to kiss. But he made no attempt to kiss her forehead now. He did not even kiss her hand. The curious pathos of her words, “I cannot be happy to-day,” had appealed strongly to him. He was a man who had become accustomed to selfsacrifice. He left the house, having only touched her hand.