“Forgive me; I have startled you,” he said. “I meant not to do that. I do not want to constrain you or to force this hope of mine upon you too suddenly, but I cannot lightly give it up. It has been with me, during all my wanderings to and fro—if not the definite hope, at least an appreciation of the fact that my sweet cousin was endowed, more than any woman whom I had known, with all the attributes and qualities a man could desire in his companion for life. I cannot, even yet, quite abandon the hope that I may yet induce you to accept my devotion.”
Margaret might have borne the rest, but this word galled her.
“Devotion!” she said mockingly, with a little scornful laugh. “Oh, Alan!”
“What do you mean? Why should you speak to me in that tone? It is unfair, Margaret. It is not like you.”
“I mean,” she said, growing grave, and speaking with a sudden, earnest vehemence, “that you degrade the word devotion, when you call the feeling you have to offer me by that name. I know too well what real devotion means. I have too just an estimate of its goodness and strength to call the cool regard you have for me devotion! A cool regard between cousins does well enough, but that feeling in connection with marriage is another thing, and I had better tell you, here and now, that I would live my life out unloved and alone, sooner than I would wrong myself by accepting such a counterfeit devotion as this that you offer me.”
Decourcy, who was, of course, entirely ignorant of the ground on which Margaret’s strong feeling was based, heard her with amazement. The only explanation that suggested itself was that some one, who happened to be aware of his rather well-known affair with Mrs. Vere, had informed his cousin. It was, therefore, with a tone of injured gentleness, that he said:
“Margaret, you surprise and grieve me inexpressibly by such words as those. I can only account for them by the possibility of some one’s having given you false ideas about me. There are always people to do these things, unfortunately,” he went on, with a little sigh of patient resignation; “but you should have hesitated before believing a story to my disadvantage. I would have been more just to you.”
“There has been no story told,” said Margaret. “If there were any stories to tell, they have been kept from me. Do not let us pursue this topic, Alan, and when we drop it now, let it be forever. It is quite out of the question that we can ever be more to each other than we are now.”
“As you have said it,” he replied, “my only course is a silent acquiescence. Painful and disappointing as such a decision is to me, since it is your decision I have no word to say against it. But with regard to the lightness and insincerity you have charged me with, I have a right to speak and I must.”
Reassured by Margaret’s assertion that no one had maligned him to her, he felt strong to defend himself, and it was, therefore, in the most urgent tone that he said: