“I don’t think any evil of you.”
“Then, dearest, look at me,” said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest tones of entreaty. “Don’t go away from me yet. Give me a moment’s happiness; make me feel you’ve forgiven me.”
“Yes, I do forgive you,” said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and all the more frightened at herself. “But pray let me go in again. Pray go away.”
A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.
“I can’t go away from you; I can’t leave you,” said Stephen, with still more passionate pleading. “I shall come back again if you send me away with this coldness; I can’t answer for myself. But if you will go with me only a little way I can live on that. You see plainly enough that your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable.”
Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Stephen, catching sight of Willy Moss peeping through the gate, called out, “Here! just come and hold my horse for five minutes.”
“Oh, no,” said Maggie, hurriedly, “my aunt will think it so strange.”
“Never mind,” Stephen answered impatiently; “they don’t know the people at St Ogg’s. Lead him up and down just here for five minutes,” he added to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he turned to Maggie’s side, and they walked on. It was clear that she must go on now.
“Take my arm,” said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling all the while as if she were sliding downward in a nightmare.
“There is no end to this misery,” she began, struggling to repel the influence by speech. “It is wicked—base—ever allowing a word or look that Lucy—that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy.”