"Forgive me!" said Chartley. "I know I am wrong. I know it is very wrong, even to feel what I feel, and that to speak it is worse. Forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive," replied Iola, in a very low tone. "You have done no wrong, that I know of."
"Oh yes, I have," answered Chartley. "I have agitated and alarmed you by my rash words. You tremble, even now."
"Every wind will move a willow," answered Iola. "If I tremble, Chartley, it is not from what you think; but, I say you have done no wrong, and I mean it."
"What, not to acknowledge love to the wife of another?" said Chartley.
"I, I, his wife!" said Iola, with a start. "No, no, I am not, and never will be. The sin were, if I vowed to love where I cannot love, if I promised what cannot be performed;" and, casting her eyes to the ground again, she clasped her hands together, and walked on by his side in silence.
"What then," said Chartley, after a moment's thought, "has not the church's sanction of your contract been pronounced?"
She remained silent for about a minute, ere she answered; and the many changes which passed over her beautiful countenance, during that short space, are impossible to describe. Then she looked up again, with one of those bright and glorious looks, in which a happy spirit seems to speak out, triumphing over dark thoughts or memories; but still there were drops in her eyes.
"Hear what there exists," she said. "I had little knowledge of it myself till I came here; but this, I now learn, is all. There is a cold parchment, contracting in marriage one Iola St. Leger to one Arnold Lord Fulmer. To it are signed the names of Calverly, Talbot, Bouchier, Savage, and other peers and gentlemen, having some guardianship over, or interest in, those two persons mentioned. But, above all," she added, with a faint smile and a rueful shake of the head, "are two crosses, somewhat crooked, shaken, and unseemly; for, in truth, I think our little hands must have been guided in the making of them, which, as at the side it is testified in clerkly hand, are the signatures of Arnold Lord Fulmer and Iola St. Leger. This is all, Lord Chartley."
"Then you are mine," said Chartley, in a low, deep, eager tone; "then you are mine. Tell me not of obstacles, think me not over bold. Iola would never have uttered what she has, had her heart not been ready to say, Yea; and as for obstacles, I will devour them like a flame."