As she finished she drew away from him and spoke very quietly—
“You see that I could never be your wife. I could not marry the son of my father’s murderer. Do not seek to persuade me.”
“Listen to me, my darling. My father was not a good man. He married at one-and-twenty my mother, a beautiful girl of seventeen, and in two years he deserted her after breaking her heart with his cruelty. She died when I was little more than six years old, but after nearly thirty years I can see her lovely face still, with its look of eternal unhappiness. I was educated at a monastery in Florence until I was eighteen, and I never saw my father’s face nor knew that he existed; he had made no sign nor troubled himself to know if I were living or dead. My mother’s father had settled some money upon me, which made me independent. When I came to England and went to Oxford I found that my father was living—that he had re-married. But though I sought him out, he betrayed such little interest in me that I left him, declaring that he would never see me again unless he summoned me.
“I carried out my own career without his aid. His life was a very unhappy one, his second wife was a woman who was my mother’s opposite entirely—strong, domineering, extravagant. He died two years ago, before I could go to him, of a painful disease.
“You see, my darling, that I knew nothing of his sin against your father—it must have been committed whilst I was in Florence. I will not press you now—you will require all your strength to act to-night. In a week from to-day I will hear your decision.”
And as she got up wearily he took her in his arms and kissed her quietly with a strength and mastery that were irresistible.
Neither by word nor look did Muriel feel that the man with whom she acted night after night remembered aught of their conversation concerning her mother’s and his father’s sin, nor of the love that he had shown to her.
Whatever his genius evinced to the audience—and with Ophelia there is but little of the tender passion to be shown—Muriel knew that he was keeping his word to the letter, and, woman-like, she experienced just a little pique that it was so.
His courtesy was always the same, but whether they were alone or not, his manner showed no more warmth than was requisite for a close friend.