A crimson fire flashed across his pallid face, and slowly faded. He drew a deep breath, and there was a silence of moments that seemed long.
"You—you—must have some reason for such a strange resolve."
"Yes, I have my reason."
"May I know it?" he asked, trembling with emotion.
"No, sir, neither you nor any one else. 'Tis my own secret. And now let us talk of other matters. It was on your conscience to give me a spinster aunt's advice. You have done your duty very prettily, and your conscience can be at rest."
He stood looking at her in a strange silence. The beautiful face which had fired with a transient passion was now only pensive. She seated herself in her favourite chair by the open window, took up a tapestry-frame, and began to work in minute stitches that needed exquisite precision of eye and hand.
How much of his future life or earthly happiness he would have given to fathom her thoughts! He had come there to persuade her to marry; he had convinced himself that she ought to marry; and yet his heart was beating with a wild gladness. He felt like a wretch who had escaped the gallows. The rope had been round his neck when the reprieve came.
"Tell me about your night-school," she said, without looking up from her work. "Do the numbers go on increasing?"
"I—I—can't talk of the school to-day," he said. "I have a world of business on my hands. Good-bye."
He left her on the instant without offering his hand, hurried through the hall, and opened the great door before the porter, somnolent after the morning's bustle, could struggle out of his leathern chair.