"Oh, you are good, you are good to me! There never was such a good man as you!"
No words could have been more sweet in his ears. He thought her quite right. He felt sure that he was a good, just man. And she had the insight to perceive it. No doubt marriages are made in heaven. Rona had been sent, bruised and maltreated, lying in a canal barge, to his door, to be the consolation of Providence for his undeserved misfortune in having a suicide brother. Ah, what a relief it would be to tell her all about his early manhood, and the tragedy of Felix's disgrace!
"Then—then—you do? You will?" he stammered. "Thank Heaven, my darling! I feared perhaps you might think me too old and grave. But with you I shall grow young again——"
She checked him as, taking her hands, he made a movement as if to draw her nearer.
"Oh, stop! Wait!" she gasped, falteringly, her head spinning with the excitement of the situation, which seemed to be carrying her away. "There is something I must tell you first—something you must hear. I don't know how to tell you.... Oh, Mr. Vanston, if only I had been perfectly frank with you from the first! You will be so—so disappointed in me. I feel as if—as if I dare not tell you!" She stopped, for the effort to speak seemed likely to choke her.
Denzil's face grew pale with apprehension. His heart knocked loudly. What was he about to hear?
"Wait," he said, kindly, but with a slight difference from his former tenderness of manner; "don't speak until you can do so without distressing yourself——"
Something in his tone—an indefinable drawing-back—caused her to cry out with urgency. "Listen! Had I guessed—had I had the least idea that you were going to say—what you said to me just now, I would have stopped you. Let us pretend that you did not say it! We are as we were this morning—you my kindest friend, I your most devoted child. Now listen. I am engaged already. I have been secretly engaged ever since I—almost ever since I first came into your house."
He was so surprised that for a few moments he sat quite still, while a dull brick-red surged up under his fair skin. Rona lowered before him the proud head she had always carried so high. At last he brought out: "Engaged! To whom?"
"To the young man who called himself my brother—to David Smith."