“Yes, I know you did not mean it; you could not. Phil may be an idler, I rather think he is, but he is so noble, so good, so unselfish, and bears with me as no one else ever could. But, Mr. Beresford, you are mistaken. Phil is not your rival, and it was no thought of him which led me to refuse you. He is my cousin, and if I loved him ever so much, I could no more marry him than I could my brother, if I had one. I am enough of a Roman Catholic to think such a marriage unnatural and wicked. I could not do it, and I have no desire to—no love for him that way. Why, I would sooner marry you than Phil; upon my word, I would.”
She had forgiven him, and he knew it, and hope rose suddenly within him, and taking her hands in his, and holding them tightly there, he began again:
“Oh, Queenie, you give me new life, new hope, for if Phil is not my rival, you may come in time to think of me, not now, not for a year, perhaps, or more, but some time, when you have learned how much I love you. Promise me that you will try. Put me on trial for a year, during which time I will not bother you with love-making. I’ll be your staid old guardian, nothing more. Will you—will you think of it a year!”
“Of what use would that be,” she said, “when at the end of the year I should think just the same?”
“But you might not,” he replied. “At least give me that chance; give me one ray of sunlight, for without it the world will be very dreary. I shall put myself on probation whether you will or not.”
She did not answer him, but stood looking off across the moon-lit meadows with a troubled look in her dark eyes which he could not fathom. At last releasing her hands from his, she said, with a little shiver:
“It is growing cold. I must go in now, and you must go home, and never speak to me again as you have to-night.”
“Not until a year, and then if no other love has come between us, I shall tell you again that I love you,” he said, and she replied:
“A year is a long time, and so much may happen to us both.”
It did seem long to her, but to him, who was so much older, it seemed as nothing, if at the end he could hope to win the girl who walked so silently by his side until the house was reached, where he said good-night to her and then rode back to town, feeling, in spite of her assertion to the contrary, that there was a grain of hope for him, if he would bide his time patiently, and feeling, too, a great remorse and hatred for himself for what he had said of Phil.