“Yes, I knew that the first day I came to the office.”
“It is the common talk there,” he said with knitted brows. “And what is your fear, Antony?”
“That when she is married to Mr Lister she will forget all about me.”
“You wrong her, boy,” he said almost fiercely; and I stared at his strange display of excitement, for I had not the key then to his thoughts, and went on blindly again and again tearing open his throbbing wound.
“You wrong her,” he said. “Antony, Miss Carr is a woman to have won whose esteem is to have won a priceless gem, and he who goes farther, and wins her love, can look but for one greater happiness—that of heaven.”
He was soaring far beyond my reach, grovelling young mole that I was, and I said in an uneasy way that must have sounded terribly commonplace and selfish:
“You don’t think she will forget me, then?”
“No,” he said sternly. “There is that in her face which seems to say that she is one who never forgets—never forgives. She is no common woman, Antony; be worthy of her trust, and think of her name in your prayers before you sleep.”
I gazed at him curiously, he seemed so strange; and, noticing my uneasy looks, he said in a cheerful voice:
“There, we will not talk so seriously any more. You see how I trust you, Antony, in return for your confidence in me. Now let’s talk of pleasant things. An engineer, eh?”