He looked once more into her face; she saw that his eyes were moist.
“Mr. Lacour, please to leave me!” Ada suddenly exclaimed, rousing herself from a kind of heaviness which had held her inactive and irresponsive. Then she added: “I cannot aid you. We all have our lives to live; yours is no harder than mine. Try your best to be happy; I know nothing else to live for.”
“Will—you—help me?” he asked, plainly enough at last. “It has come, you see, in spite of everything. Will you help me?”
“I cannot. You mean, of course, will I promise to be your wife. I shall make that promise to no one till I am one-and-twenty.”
It was a flash of illumination for Lacour. “Not even,” he inquired, with a smile of quiet humour, “when Mrs. Clarendon marries?”
“When Mrs. Clarendon marries?” Ada repeated, not exactly with surprise, but questioningly.
“You know that she is going to marry Lord Winterset, and very soon? Why, there is another terrible mistake; I ought not to have mentioned it if you do not know it. I thought it was understood.”
“Perhaps it is,” returned Ada, a curious expression in her eyes. “It does not matter; it does not affect me. I beg you not to stay longer. Indeed, we have no more to say to each other.”
“May I write to you from India?”
“If you still have the slightest interest in me; I shall be glad to hear you have got there safely. I must leave you now.”