"You make the quarrel," he panted, "do you? You complain?... By what right? She was dear to me before you had ever seen her, before you had ever heard of her, before you'd set foot in the town she lives in. You complain? It's for me to resent, not you. All our lives since we were children, you've had everything I was denied because you were good-looking and I was hideous; when we were boys your good looks made things harder for me; as men, all the pleasure of life has been for you, while I've had nothing but contempt. And at last when a girl has come to care for me—to care for what I am, my work, my thoughts, my feelings, the things that are myself—you must blunder in the way, and want to take her from me too. You taunt me with my colour? It ought to remind you of what I've had to bear; it ought to shame you for asking me to give up to you the only chance of happiness I've ever had! If I've been a coward, I was what the intolerance of minds like yours has made me. Show your own courage—take your appeals to the girl you love, don't beg me to stand aside for you! You taunt me with my colour? Wait till she does! Talk to her as best you can—and so will I. For once I'm not afraid of your good looks—she has seen deeper than my skin. Tell her that you love her, and find which has more power to move her heart—your face, or the words in me!"
And while he boasted, he believed in the power of words, not knowing that he had preferred a face himself.
When he was alone, he cried, looking uglier still.
And late in the evening he wrote his first love-letter.
It was a very long letter. He wrote of the joy that the correspondence had brought him, of the years of loneliness and suffering that had made him afraid to own the truth. He wrote of the day the portrait came, his temptation, his weakness—of his longing to confess himself at Godstone, and of the fear that had still held him back. He poured out the story of his life, the story of his childhood, of his youth, and of his love. He prayed to her for pity, for tenderness, for "Heaven." He said that on the morrow he would go to her to hear her answer. And because the need for pretending ignorance of the name was past now, he addressed the letter to "Miss Hilda Sorrenford" in full.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
It reached her early the next afternoon. She was sitting before the dining-room fire, with a shilling manicure set in her lap, polishing her finger-nails. There was no one else in the room; Bee had gone back to the studio, and the Professor was at Great Hunby. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and she opened the envelope with as much interest as was natural in a girl whose letters were few. Astonishment laid hold of her at the first lines. She glanced instinctively at the address again, and then found the last page, and looked at the signature. Her lovely eyes dilated, her brows climbed high; truth to tell, she had a rather stupid air as she sat deciphering David's declaration, with her mouth ajar, and the file, and the rubber, and the little powder-box lying in her lap. Only two points were intelligible to her: the "Mr. Tremlett" she had met was David Lee, and he adored her. It can never be unpleasant to be adored; she by no means shared the opinion that his adoration was an insult, though she did not regard it seriously; but she was too bewildered even to simper. "Her photograph, their correspondence?" At every reference to these things she felt more dazed. By what extraordinary mistake could a man from whom she had never heard till now imagine that he had been corresponding with her?
After she had stared at the fire, and smiled at herself in the glass, she mounted to the studio, her eyes still wide, a glimmer of amusement in them.
"Just look at this! Read it through!" she exclaimed, holding the letter out.