That answer was a rejection!
Not a young lady's No, which means Yes to-morrow; or which means perhaps that you have not been on your knees in a passion of despair, like Lord Edward Fitz-Morkysh in Miss Oderose's last novel. Nothing of this kind; but a calm negative, carefully and tersely worded, as if she feared to mislead him by so much as one syllable that could leave a loophole through which hope might creep into his heart. He was rejected. For a moment it was quite as much as he could do to believe it. He was inclined to imagine that the signification of certain words had suddenly changed, or that he had been in the habit of mistaking them all his life, rather than that those words meant this hard fact; namely, that he, Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, and of Saxon extraction, had been rejected by the daughter of a Lombard-Street banker.
He paused—for an hour and a half or so, as it seemed to him—in order to collect himself before he spoke again.
"May I—venture to inquire," he said,—how horribly commonplace the phrase seemed! he could have used no worse had he been inquiring for furnished lodgings,—"may I ask if any prior attachment—to one more worthy——"
"Oh, no, no, no!"
The answer came upon him so suddenly, that it almost startled him as much as her rejection.
"And yet your decision is irrevocable?"
"Quite irrevocable."
"Forgive me if I am intrusive; but—but Mr. Floyd may perhaps have formed some higher views——"
He was interrupted by a stifled sob as she clasped her hands over her averted face.