'I mean that, under the most favourable circumstances, no honourable man could, in your position, ask a woman to marry him.'
'I mean to ask her, though,' was his reply.
'But, my dear fellow——'
'Luscombe,' and there was a steady look in his eyes as he spoke, 'I have thought it all out. Almighty God never put such a love in a man's heart as He has put in my heart for Lorna Bolivick, to laugh at him. At the very first opportunity I shall tell her everything.'
'And if she refuses you,' I said, 'as most likely she will?'
'I shall still love her, and never give up hoping and striving.'
'You mean——?'
'I mean that nothing will turn me aside from my determination, nothing,—nothing.'
'But supposing you have a wife,—supposing that when you were a boy, before you lost your memory, you married some one, what then?'
'Don't talk rubbish, old man,' was his reply.