"Folly? To love you? I have never done a wiser thing in my life!"
"Pray do not speak of love. You know—you must know—that word to me is dead for ever!"
"But some day, in the future, you might——"
"My future, Doctor Danby, belongs to my child. I shall never allow any interest to come before my love for her. Will you understand this, and forgive and forget to-day as though it had never been?"
He was not a really vain man, or her frigid words, her rejection of his love, would have sent him from the house angered and mortified, never to return. But he was large-souled and childishly tender of heart, and thought, even in his disappointment, that, in her unprotected state, she might at times have need of him.
Because his demand had exceeded his deserts, and because he had received a merited snub for his rashness, there was no reason, he argued, that she should be deprived the right of using him as her friend.
He smiled a sickly assent and extended his hand.
"Good-bye, and I may come and see you sometimes still? It is not as if there were anyone else——"
Mrs Cameron interrupted hurriedly.
"Please do, and we will never reopen this subject again!"