"My dear Nell," he stammered, "it is only a fortnight or so from the day that should have been our wedding day."
"I was thinking as much. What have you had in your mind? Some foolish Quixotic notion. What were you waiting for?"
"To tell the truth, Nell, till you should be happy."
"Don't take the chances of letting her go away without telling her. Do you think I haven't known that you were in love with her all the time? Why, that first day I saw her I said to myself in amazement, 'Where were his eyes that he could have chosen you before her?'"
"Nelly, how do I know that she will look at me?"
"She will never look at anyone else. Speak now, if only in fairness to the men who might be in love with her, who are in love with her and may have false hopes."
"She won't look at me, Nell."
"She has sent Mr. Ilbert about his business, but he will not let her be. He says that so long as she is not anybody else's she may yet be his. I didn't want to betray him, but I must make you understand."
Poor Ilbert! For a moment Drummond's mind was filled with a lordly compassion towards him. Ilbert rejected! And for him! To be sure, he knew Mary cared for him. She was not the girl to have admitted him to the intimacy of last winter unless she cared. She had borne with him exquisitely. She had even taken her successful rival to her breast. He had made her suffer, the magnanimous woman.
Suddenly he took fire. He had been a slow, dull fellow, he said to himself, and quaked at the thought that Ilbert might have robbed him of his jewel. Now, he felt as though he must follow her, and make her his without even the possible mischances of a few hours of absence.