"Well?"
"They not only won't have me, but they gave me a parting piece of advice—"
"What?"
She did not answer directly. "I vowed I never would tell you, Jude—it is so vulgar and distressing!"
"Is it about us?"
"Yes."
"But do tell me!"
"Well—somebody has sent them baseless reports about us, and they say you and I ought to marry as soon as possible, for the sake of my reputation! … There—now I have told you, and I wish I hadn't!"
"Oh, poor Sue!"
"I don't think of you like that means! It did just occur to me to regard you in the way they think I do, but I hadn't begun to. I have recognized that the cousinship was merely nominal, since we met as total strangers. But my marrying you, dear Jude—why, of course, if I had reckoned upon marrying you I shouldn't have come to you so often! And I never supposed you thought of such a thing as marrying me till the other evening; when I began to fancy you did love me a little. Perhaps I ought not to have been so intimate with you. It is all my fault. Everything is my fault always!"