"Why? You say she loves me as a brother; why, then, should the other thought be so terribly abhorrent? Could she not in time learn to give me more than a brother's love?"
"Never!"
"Why?"
"Because she loves another!"
"Another! Who?"
"Can you not guess?"
Guess! Ah, yes; I could indeed. Had I not seen it for weeks? My mother need not tell me more. I knew perfectly well.
"Surely you have seen that they have been lovers from childhood," she went on. "She has been all in all to him, while—well, you must have seen how she regarded him. He did not speak to her about it, however, until he came home from Oxford, and then, on the day of his arrival, he told her what he had felt for years."
"And she?"
"She told him—that—what in short he had been longing to hear, and, although we knew it not, they became betrothed."