“You are the most beautiful creature in all the world,” said Rowton, with passion.
She looked at him with a pained expression; her pretty dark brows were knit together.
“Don’t,” she said suddenly. “I cannot listen to such words just now, they seem incongruous, they press on my heart and hurt me. Whatever you may choose to think of him, I love that old man upstairs; his fate has been a cruel one, his grief is killing him; his terrible, his awful grief is killing him, it is carrying him to his grave.”
“I am a heartless brute not to sympathise with you, Nancy,” said Rowton. “What can be the grief, my dearest?”
“Ah! that I dare not tell you, that is our fearful secret. Once I was a very happy girl, a thoughtless child. I wanted for nothing, I was gay as the sunshine itself. Father was a successful man, he was quite a great doctor, he had one of the largest practices in Harley Street. Then came the trouble; it was a blow sudden and awful, like a bolt from the blue. It crushed father and turned him into an old man, a man with only one bitter object in life. Everything else seemed to die in him, everything but the one consuming passion. He sold the furniture in Harley Street, and we came here because the house was going for an old song, and father wanted us to live cheaply; we have lived here ever since that blow descended on our heads, and we have saved, and saved; we have starved ourselves, we have lain cold at night, we have wanted the common comforts of the most ordinary existence, all for one terrible purpose.”
“You certainly are a mysterious pair,” said Rowton with a laugh which echoed painfully in the old room. “Just whisper to me what the purpose was, Nance.”
She hesitated for a moment, then bending forward whispered a single word in his ear.
His ruddy, dark face changed colour when she spoke, for quite a moment he was silent.
“Your father has made a mistake,” he said; then gravely, “such a purpose turns round and crushes the man who holds it in his grasp. His own fell purpose will kill your father. You must drop it from your life, Nancy. Your little sunshiny face was never meant for shadow or sorrow; you have lived too long in the gloom; turn now to the sunshine of our mutual love.”