It was only by a tremendous effort over self that he was able to summon up the strength to speak; and, in place of the halting, hesitating words of a few minutes before, he now spoke out earnestly and well.
“Forgive me,” he said; and she trembled as she shrank away to cover her eyes with her hand. “It was folly on my part to speak to you at such a time, but my love is stronger than worldly forms, and though I grieve to have given you pain, I cannot feel sorry that I have spoken the simple, honest truth. You are too sweet and true to deal lightly with a man’s frank, earnest love. Forgive me—say good-bye. I am going away patiently—to wait.”
His manner changed as he took her disengaged hand and kissed it tenderly and respectfully.
“I will not ask to see your father to-day. He is, I know, suffering and ill; but tell him from me that he has only to send a messenger to bring me here at once. I want to help him in every way. Good-bye.”
“Stop!”
He was half-way to the door when that one word arrested him, and with a sense of delicious joy flooding his breast, he turned quickly to listen to the words which would give him a life’s happiness. The flash of joy died out as quickly as that of lightning, and in the same way seemed to leave the hope that had arisen scathed and dead. For there was no mistaking that look, nor the tone of the voice which spoke what seemed to him the death-warrant of his love.
“I could not speak,” she said in a strange low voice full of the pain she suffered. “I tried to check you, but the words would not come. What you ask is impossible; I could not promise. It would be cruel to you—unjust, and it would raise hopes that could never be fulfilled.”
“No, no. Don’t say that,” he cried appealingly. “I have been premature. I should have waited patiently.”
“It would have been the same. Mr Leslie, you should not have asked this. You should not have exposed yourself to the pain of a refusal, me to the agony of being forced to speak.”
“I grant much of what you say,” he pleaded. “Forgive me.”