“Say no more,” she continued. “I am still weak, and this troubles me. Pray go now.”
“Yes, I am going,” he said eagerly, “to fight a hard fight. I used to think of it as for fame alone. Now it is for love—your love—the love of the woman who first taught me that I had a heart.”
Raising the hand she surrendered, he kissed it tenderly, and was about to speak again, but he could not trust himself; and giving her a look full of love, trust, and devotion, he hurried back to the study, where Salis sat with Mary, waiting his return.
“Well?” said Salis, as Mary sat with pinched lips, and eyes wild with emotion.
“Congratulate me, my dear boy!” cried North excitedly.
“She has promised to be your wife?”
“No, no; I am to wait and work. She is quite right. It was assumption on my part.”
“Then she has refused you?”
“Oh, no! She is quite right. She bids me do something to make me worthy of her love, and—ah! Hartley, old fellow, I did not know what life was before. There! I am the happiest fool on earth.”
He turned to Mary, who was gazing at him with a look so full of pain that it would have betrayed her secret at another time. But just then the love madness was strong, and its effect sufficient to blind North, who, in his joy, raised Mary’s hand and kissed it, as he had kissed her sister’s.