Meanwhile he, with his eyes fixed upon her face, read it like a book. His own suddenly changed.
‘It is useless to struggle, love,’ he said, speaking very gently and tenderly. ‘We have both done our best—we have tried to do right, but Fate has been too strong for us. We must just make up our minds to let ourselves go with the tide—and be happy.’
Rosalie was, as has been seen, very impressionable, very emotional—in a word, very womanly; but for all that there was at her heart’s core the little kernel of strength which is to be found in the hearts of most good women—an instinctive sense of rectitude, the love of duty for duty’s sake, even when the accomplishment of it involves great sacrifice. She looked Richard full in the face now.
‘No,’ she said; ‘I will not take any happiness that has to be bought by doing wrong. I made my own choice and fixed my lot in life before I knew you, and now I will abide by it.’
The very severity of the struggle gave her courage, and Richard, all passion-swayed as he was, had in him a certain element of chivalrousness that responded to the effort she was making.
He was silent, and Rosalie, quick to perceive her advantage, went on eagerly:
‘I ask you to leave me, Richard; I want you to go now. It is quite true that you have a kind of power over me, and that if you’—her voice faltered for a moment, but she steadied it—‘if you go on urging me and persuading me you will very likely make me give in in the end; but I ask you, because you love me, not to do this. We could not be really happy if—if we came together through being dishonourable and ungrateful. It is better to do right at all costs. As for me, I mean to keep my word to your uncle. I will try my best to make him a good wife and to forget you.’
‘And have you thought,’ returned he, with a bitterness which he could not control—‘have you thought at all of what is to become of me? The whole thing is absurd,’ he went on with increasing irritation. ‘Do you think for a moment that my uncle could suffer a tithe of what I shall suffer? You know very well he is not capable of it. Besides—’ He broke off.
‘I know what you mean,’ said Rosalie, colouring faintly. ‘He would not have thought of marrying me if I had not first suggested it. But I did suggest it, and he is very fond of me now.’
‘Fond!’ echoed the young man scornfully.