"With all my heart," she faltered, and then hid her face in her hands.
It seemed as if the confession had been wrung from her somehow. In the next moment she hated herself for having said the words, and calming herself with a great effort, said to him quietly.
"And now that you know how weak I was, when I seemed indifferent to you, have pity upon me, Mr. Fairfax."
"Pity!" he exclaimed. "It is not a question of pity; it is a question of two lives that have been blighted through your foolish submission to that plotting woman. But there must be some recompense to be found in the future for all the tortures of the past. I have broken every tie for your sake, Clarissa; you must make some sacrifice for me."
Clarissa looked at him wonderingly. Was he so mad as to suppose that she was of the stuff that makes runaway wives?
"Your father tempted my mother, Mr. Fairfax," she said, "but I thank Heaven she escaped him. The role of seducer seems hereditary in your family. You could not make me break my word when I was free to marry you; do you believe that you can make me false to my husband?"
"Yes, Clarissa. I swore as much that night in the orchard—swore that I would win you, in spite of the world."
"And my son," she said, with the tone she might have used if he had been one-and-twenty, "is he to blush for his mother by and by?"
"I have never found that sons have a faculty for blushing on account of that kind of thing," Mr. Fairfax answered lightly.—"Egad, there'd be a great deal of blushing going on at some of the crack clubs if they had!" he said to himself afterwards.
Clarissa rose from the seat amongst the orange-trees, and George Fairfax did not attempt to detain her.