"Who is it?" asked Dorothy tremulously, as he paused; and she looked up into his face with a pained expression. So soon to have forgotten his love to Phyllis—and to love again!
"Why, Dorothy!" he exclaimed, "there is nobody in the world like my mother but you! Don't you feel it? My father is always pointing it out. Will you not some day forget my foolish fancy for Phyllis, and believe that I love you, and only you, with all my heart? I have loved you ever since we were at Cortina and found out poor Martin."
Dorothy made no answer. Her heart beat so quickly that she knew she could not control her voice or her tears if she attempted to speak. Her love for him dated farther back than his for her.
"You think me fickle, and that I fall in love too easily," he said in tones of deprecating earnestness, "but set me a time, let me prove myself in earnest. I had not seen you when I was inextricably bound to Phyllis. Oh! I love you quite differently; I think of you as if you were my conscience. I try to see myself as you see me; and when I do I feel how unworthy I am of you."
"No, no," she answered, between laughing and sobbing; "unworthy of me!"
"Then you will give me time to prove that I love you," he said, "and to give me a chance of winning your love."
"There is no need of that," she whispered.
"Is that true?" he cried, seizing her hands, and gazing eagerly into her face. "Do you mean that you have loved me, blind idiot that I was? Do you mean that you were not disgusted by me when I was playing the forlorn lover, and must needs be sent abroad to cure me of my folly? O Dorothy! if I could only make you forget what a fool I made of myself!"
"I was so sorry for you," she said pityingly, "and I would have done all I could to save you from your sorrow. But it is best as it is, perhaps."
"A thousand times best!" he exclaimed. "Ever since we were at Cortina you have been in my heart of hearts; and I understand a little now the sacred mystery that a true marriage must be."