“No, Miss Levinger, I agree with you, though I have known others who thought differently. The main thing is whether you can care enough about me.”
“That is one thing, Sir Henry,” she answered in a low voice; “also there are others.”
“I suppose that you mean whether or no I am worthy of you, Miss Levinger. Well, even though it should destroy my chances with you, I will tell you frankly that, in my judgment, I am not. Listen, Miss Levinger: till within a few months ago I had never cared about any woman; then I saw you for the second time, and thought you the sweetest lady that I had ever met, for I understood how good and true you are, and in my heart I hoped that a day would come when I might venture to ask you what I am asking you now. Afterwards trouble arose through my own weakness and folly—trouble between myself and another woman. I am sure that you will not press me for details, because, in order to give them, I must betray another person’s secret. To be brief, I should probably have married this woman, but she threw me over and chose another man.”
“What!” said Emma, startled out of her self-control, “is Joan Haste married?”
“I see that you know more about me than I thought. She is married—to Mr. Samuel Rock.”
“I cannot understand it at all; it is almost incredible.”
“Nor can I, but the fact remains. She wrote to tell me of it herself, and, what is more, her husband showed me the marriage certificate. And now I have made a clean breast of it, for I will not sail under false colours, and you must judge me. If you choose to take me, I promise you that no woman shall ever have a better husband than I will be to you, for your happiness and welfare shall be the first objects of my life. The question is, after what I have told you, can you care for me?”
Emma stopped, for all this while they had been walking slowly, and looked him full in the eyes, a last red ray of the dying light falling on her sweet face.
“Sir Henry,” she said, “you have been frank with me, and I honour you for it, none the less because I happen to know something of the story. And now I will be equally frank with you, though to do so is humbling to me. When I stayed in the same house with you more than two years ago, you took little notice of me, but I grew fond of you, and I have never changed my mind. Still I do not think that, as things are, I should marry you on this account alone, seeing that a woman looks for love in her marriage; and, Sir Henry, in all that you have said to me you have spoken no—”
“How could I, knowing what I had to tell you?” he broke in.