“I care immensely, I assure you,” she interrupted, “and I ask of you, please, to tell me!”
Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected, threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. “Ah, it’s not for such a matter I’m here, Lady Grace—I’m here with that fond question of my own.” And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement motion of protest: “I’ve come for your kind answer—the answer your father instructed me to count on.”
“I’ve no kind answer to give you!”—she raised forbidding hands. “I entreat you to leave me alone.”
There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as if stricken by violence. “In God’s name then what has happened—when you almost gave me your word?”
“What has happened is that I’ve found it impossible to listen to you.” And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in her quick circuit of the hall. “That’s all you’ve got to say to me after what has passed between us?”
He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her passionate denial set him a limit. “I’ve got to say—sorry as I am—that if you must have an answer it’s this: that never, Lord John, never, can there be anything more between us.” And her gesture cleared her path, permitting her to achieve her flight. “Never, no, never,” she repeated as she went—“never, never, never!” She got off by the door at which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the great blank splendour.