"Lady Perivale, when I left Miss Rodney's drawing-room just now, my mind was so overwhelmed with trouble that I wanted to be alone—wanted time to think. I have been pacing this pathway ever since, not long, perhaps, in actual moments, but an age in thought, and—and—the end of it all is that, in the most profound humility and self-contempt, I have to implore your pardon for having suffered my thoughts to wrong you. My judgment has been to blame—not my heart. That has never wavered."
"Oh, Mr. Haldane, was it worth while to apologize? You have acted like all my other society friends—except one. People who have known me ever since my marriage choose to believe that I have made myself unworthy of their acquaintance. I cannot call it friendship, for no friend could believe the story that has been told of me."
"You cut me to the heart. No friend, you say! And I—I who have so honoured you in the past, I was fool enough to believe the slander that was dinned into my ear, chapter and verse, with damning iteration. I struggled against that belief—struggled and succumbed—because people were so sure of their facts, and because—well, I confess, I believed the story. But I thought there might have been a marriage—that for some reason of your own you wanted to keep it dark. I could not think of you as other people thought, but I believed that you were lost to me for ever. I had seen Rannock at your house, seen him about with you—and—and I thought you cared for him."
"You were mistaken. I know now that I was foolish in receiving him upon such a friendly footing."
"Only because the man is unworthy of any woman's confidence or regard. Lady Perivale, I think last year you must have had some suspicion that I was fighting a battle with my own heart."
"I don't quite follow you."
"I must be a better actor than I fancy myself if you did not know that I loved you."
"I can see no reason for fighting battles—if—if that were so."
"Can you not? You don't know—or you did not know then—how malevolent the world can be—this modern world, which measures everything in life by its money value. You are rich, and I have just enough to live upon comfortably without watching my bank-book. From the society point of view I am a pauper."
"What would other people's opinion matter if I knew you were sincere?"