“What other? Oh! do speak plainly.”
“I must, at such a time as this. If I could not think you guilty, I might fancy myself to have been mistaken.”
“And did you fancy so? Did you suppose I neither loved you, nor meant you to think that I did?”
“I did conclude myself mistaken.”
“Oh, Margaret! I should say—if I dared—that such a thought—such humility, such generosity—could come of nothing but love.”
Margaret made no reply. They understood one another too completely for words. Even in the first gush of joy, there was intense bitterness in the thought of what Margaret must have suffered; and Philip vowed, in the bottom of his soul, that his whole life should be devoted to make her forget it. He could have cursed his sister with equal energy.
There was no end to what had to be said. Philip was impatient to tell what he had been doing, and the reasons of the whole of his conduct. Margaret’s views had become his own, as to the desultoriness of the life he had hitherto led. He had applied himself diligently to the study of the law, intending to prove to himself and to her, that he was capable of toil, and of a steady aim at an object in life, before he asked her to decide what their relation to each other was henceforth to be.
“Surely,” said he, “you might have discovered this much from my letters to my mother.”
“And how were we to know what was in your letters to your mother?”
“Do you mean that you have not read or heard them all this time?”