'Consider once again,' said he, brokenly; 'think of what my life will be apart from you. Will you dream of me when I am gone?'
'Why should I dream—and dreams come unbidden?'
'Think of me, then?'
'A waste of time surely. I shall have much to think of—papa and my poor people.'
'Why do you speak like this to me?' he said, with a flash of indignation. 'Is it because each day sees me a poorer and your father a richer man? or has another touched your heart?'
An angry smile curled her lip at this question. She recollected the scene in the conservatory, and remembered it has been said that 'a woman never yields an inch, however innocently and generously, to a man that he does not suspect her, sooner or later, of having given way in a similar manner to some man who has come earlier.'
'I listen to all this too late. I know your motive. I thank you for the honour you condescend to do me, but let the matter end,' said Bella, while a shuddering sigh escaped her pale lips, for her respiration came in little proud gasps and her heart throbbed painfully—painfully for the part that pride inspired, and a doubt of the purity of Jerry's love, though at the time loving him dearly herself. It was every way a curious situation, and at last Jerry took up his hat and gloves.
'We have been somewhat apart of late,' said he; 'yet I do not wish—that—that we should part coldly.'
'Oh no; why should we?' she asked, in her sweetest tone. 'I am,' she thought, 'in reality—but for the encumbrances on his estate—nothing more to him than all the other girls he has talked to, laughed with, and flirted with, as his cold hard mother told me. So let me be on my guard—on my guard!'
'You will—most probably—be married before I return, if I ever return at all, which God only can foresee,' he said.