At that moment the passion within him burned as strongly, but it was softened and subdued by the better feelings—the tender love which prevailed.
“Forgive me,” he said deprecatingly. “I was nearly mad.”
She made no reply, but stood by the couch half turned from him, and he could see that her lips were working.
“Can you not hear my words?” he continued humbly. “What more can I say? It was the truth.”
She turned to him proudly.
“Mr Elthorne,” she said, “I ask you, as a gentleman, to end this scene. If you have any respect for my position here, pray go.”
He stood looking at her for a few moments, then turned and left the room without a word, giddy with emotion, crushed by a terrible feeling of despair which drove him to his own room.
Here the bitter thoughts came back.
Alison had been impressed from the first, and he was always seeking for opportunities to speak to her. That, then, was the reason, he told himself. She had twitted him with his engagement, but she would not have cast him off for that; and in this spirit a couple of hours went by, during which he paced the room.
Unable to bear the turmoil in his brain, toward the middle of the afternoon he went down and determined on trying to calm the irritation of his nerves by a long walk.