Some sudden desperate whim caused him to exclaim, “But suppose I had not done all you think, would you not love me still?”
Her eyes, raised to his face with anxious tenderness for the pain she had believed herself to have inflicted, fell at this speech.
“What a question! I don't know. I suppose I should; yet—but what is the use, Maurice, of supposing? I know you have done it, and that is enough. How can I say what I might have done if something else had happened? Why, you might not have loved me.”
If there had been for a moment any sentiment of remorse in his selfish heart, the hesitation of her answer went far to dispel it.
“To be sure, that's true,” and he placed his arm round her.
She lifted her face again with a bright laugh.
“We are a pair of geese—supposing! How can we help what has past? We have the Future, darling—the Future, in which I am to be your little wife, and we are to love each other all our lives, like the people in the story-books.”
Temptation to evil had often come to Maurice Frere, and his selfish nature had succumbed to it when in far less witching shape than this fair and innocent child luring him with wistful eyes to win her. What hopes had he not built upon her love; what good resolutions had he not made by reason of the purity and goodness she was to bring to him? As she said, the past was beyond recall; the future—in which she was to love him all her life—was before them. With the hypocrisy of selfishness which deceives even itself, he laid the little head upon his heart with a sensible glow of virtue.
“God bless you, darling! You are my Good Angel.”
The girl sighed. “I will be your Good Angel, dear, if you will let me.”