"And yet you are about to be married, Norine!" At that reproachful cry she suddenly remembered the New York lawyer, and all the duties of her life. She drew her hands away resolutely in spite of his resistance and stood free—trembling and white.
"You are going to be married to Richard Gilbert, Norine?"
"Yes," she said, falteringly; "and you—you are going to be married, too?"
"I?" in astonishment; "I married! Who can have told you that?"
"Mr. Gilbert."
"Then it is the first time I have ever known him—lawyer though he be—to tell a falsehood. No, Norine, I am not going to be married."
She caught her breath in the shock, the joy of the words.
"Not going to be married! Not going—Oh, Mr. Thorndyke, don't deceive me—don't!"
"I am not deceiving you Norine—why should I? There is but one whom I love; if she will be my wife I will marry—not unless. Can you not guess who it is, Norine? Can you not guess what I have come from New York to say before it is too late? I only heard of your projected marriage last week—heard it then by merest accident. Ah, Norine! if you knew what a shock that announcement was. Ever since I left here I have been trying to school myself to forget you, but in vain. I never knew how utterly in vain until I heard you were the promised wife of Richard Gilbert. I could stay away no longer—I felt I must tell you or die. It may seem like presumption, like madness, my coming at the eleventh hour, and you the promised bride of another man, but I had to come. Even if you refused me with scorn, I felt I must come and hear my doom from your lips. They have urged me to marry another, an heiress she is, and a ward of my uncle's—he even threatens to disinherit me if I do not. But I will be disinherited, I will brave poverty and face the future boldly so that the girl I love is by my side. Helen is beautiful, and will not say no, they tell me, if I ask, but what is that to me since I love only you. Norine, tell me I have not come too late. You don't, you can't care for this elderly lawyer, old enough to be your father. Norine, speak and tell me you care only for me."
"Only for you—only for you!" she cried, "O, Laurence, I love you with all my heart!"