“Oh, hush! hush!” she panted. “You must not speak to me like that. Mr Cyril, I beg—I implore you—never to address me again. You know—you must know—that I am engaged to Mr Ross.”
“Engaged to Mr Ross!” he said, bitterly. “It is not true. There is no engagement between you.”
“It is true,” she panted, hurrying on, and trembling for her weakness, as she felt how strongly her heart was pleading for him, who kept pace with her, and twice had laid his hand, as if to stop her, upon her arm.
“I have your aunt’s assurance that it is not true,” he continued; “and I have hoped, Sage, I have dared to believe, that you were not really fond of this man.”
“Mr Cyril, I beg—I implore you to leave me,” she cried.
“If I left you now,” he said, hoarsely, “feeling what I feel, knowing what I know, it would be to plunge into some miserable, reckless course that might end who can say how? What have I to live for if you refuse me your love?”
“How can you be so cruel to me?” she cried, angrily. “You insult me by these words, Mr Cyril I am alone, and you take advantage of my position. You know I am engaged to Mr Ross.”
“I do not,” he retorted, passionately. “I do not believe it; and I never will believe it till I see you his wife. His wife!” he continued. “It is absurd. You will never be Luke Ross’s wife. It is impossible.”
“I will not—I cannot—talk to you,” she cried, increasing her pace. It was on her lips to add, “I dare not”; but she checked herself in time, as she glanced sidewise at him, for with a feeling of misery and despair, strangely mingled with pleasure, she felt that all her good resolutions were being swept away by her companion’s words, and, in an agony of shame and dread lest he should read her thoughts, she once more hurried her steps.
“You cannot throw me off like that,” he said, bitterly. “I will not be pitched over in this contemptuous manner. Only the other day you looked kindly and tenderly at me.”