"Tell me about your illness, now that man has gone. Have you been seriously ill—as ill as my mother thinks?"
"How can I possibly tell what your mother thinks?"
"Oh, Grace! do not trifle just now! I have known for a very long time that my whole happiness is bound up in you!"
"Margaret is free, remember."
"What does that matter? Why remind me that I once liked her best? Is a man never to change? I know now—I have long known it—if I could but get you to believe it! that Margaret was a sort of dream of my youth. I shall always reverence her, but she is too far beyond me. She is like some pure cold saint, and I do love you, Grace!"
"But I have no wealth to endow you with," said Grace, looking at him earnestly, "only a very few hundreds a year."
She watched him a little anxiously, but his face showed it did not matter.
"I am poor enough," he said, "but you shall never want anything if you will only give me the right of taking care of you. I have succeeded in getting an appointment in Italy. I am sure that climate will suit you; the doctors said so."
"And you got the appointment without knowing that I would say yes," exclaimed Grace, a good deal in her old manner.
"If you say no, all places will be alike to me."