"Yes—in a way. Still, I should make sure I was not striving after an impossibility."
"Everything that has ever been done worth the doing,—I mean every really great thing—has been done by attempting the impossible."
Olive turned towards him with a glance that did not lack admiration. He was a fine-looking young fellow; tall, well formed, and well favoured. He belonged to that class which maintains the best traditions of the old county families. He was the owner of an estate which lay contiguous to that of John Castlemaine, and he was a healthy-minded, clear-brained young Englishman. In many things the two were opposed. His sympathies were, in the main, with the classes; hers with the people; he had but little belief in the democracy, she had. He believed in the aristocracy of birth; she in the aristocracy of intellect and personal worth. Not that he was not interested in the well-being of the people—he was; but their ideas as to the way in which that well-being would be realised were different. His mind had been shaped and coloured by the class among which he had been reared, by the atmosphere in which he had lived, and the atmosphere of this Devonshire squire's home was different from that which had surrounded Olive Castlemaine's life.
"No," he went on presently, "I never believe in giving up. That is a characteristic of my race. The Briarfields have always been noted for their—obstinacy."
"It is not always a pleasant characteristic," she said with a laugh.
"But a useful one," he said. "It has saved me from defeat more than once. When I first went to a public school I fought a boy bigger than myself. He whipped me badly; but I mastered him in the end."
There was no boastfulness in the way he spoke; moreover, he evidently had a reason for leading the conversation into this channel.
"That is one reason why I refuse to take 'No' from you," he continued. "I never loved any other woman; I never shall; and I shall never give up hope of winning you."
"Really, I am very sorry for this, Mr. Briarfield."
"Don't say that, Miss Castlemaine. I suppose it is bad policy to expose my hand in this way; nevertheless what I tell you is true. Although you first refused me three years ago, I shall never give up hoping that I shall win you, and never give up trying."