The stress on the question choked him, just as his heart sprang to her.
“Can you face the world with me, Rose?”
“Oh, Evan! is there an escape for me? Think Decide!—No—no! there is not. My mother, I know, looks on it so. Why did she trust me to be with you here, but that she thinks me engaged to him, and has such faith in me? Oh, help me!—be my guide. Think whether you would trust me hereafter! I should despise myself.”
“Not if you marry him!” said Evan, bitterly. And then thinking as men will think when they look on the figure of a fair girl marching serenely to a sacrifice, the horrors of which they insist that she ought to know: half-hating her for her calmness—adoring her for her innocence: he said: “It rests with you, Rose. The world will approve you, and if your conscience does, why—farewell, and may heaven be your help.”
She murmured, “Farewell.”
Did she expect more to be said by him? What did she want or hope for now? And yet a light of hunger grew in her eyes, brighter and brighter, as it were on a wave of yearning.
“Take my hand once,” she faltered.
Her hand and her whole shape he took, and she with closed eyes let him strain her to his breast.
Their swoon was broken by the opening of the door, where Old Tom Cogglesby and Lady Jocelyn appeared.
“’Gad! he seems to have got his recompense—eh, my lady?” cried Old Tom. However satisfactorily they might have explained the case, it certainly did seem so.