"Marry!" he echoed in an impatient and irritated tone, "Marry! I don't think of it."
A load was raised from my heart. I breathed. I again. His marriage was the only evil to which I could see no remedy.
By the fright it had given me, I perceived how much I had dreaded it; but a vague instinct forbade me to show him this. I quickly changed the subject.
"Take me with you," I said entreatingly, "I will give you no trouble."
"Trouble! Oh, that indeed I were going away and you with me," he half groaned. "Blessed would be that trouble; too sweet, too delightful the task of bearing you away, alone with me, to some far land."
"Cornelius," I said, "tell me all at once. Since you are not going away— what is it?"
"I suppose," he answered after a brief pause, "you know, though you have never alluded to it, that this park before us is your grandfather's; that the house of which we can discern the roof through this grove of elm and beech, is Thornton House. I am taking you there now."
"But I shall go back to Rock Cottage with you?" I exclaimed eagerly. "I shall go to London with you, and live there in the house of Kate. Shall I not?"
He did not answer; but he half averted his troubled face; his gaze shunned mine.
"Cornelius," I said, clinging to him, "I will not go and live with Mr. Thornton, I will not. I don't love him, and I love you and Kate as my life. He treated me unkindly, and you took me and reared me. Unless you turn me out of your home, I will not leave it for his."