Oswald turned his gaze upon her, his dark blue eyes never more earnest, more eager.
"Will you let me urge this according to the dictates of common-sense? Is it fit that you, being what you are, a lady--young, refined, inexperienced--should be dancing attendance at Jones and Green's offices; men who do not bear too good a reputation in the legal world, to meet principally Mr. Alfred King, a man who bears a worse?"
The crimson shone in her cheeks. Put in this way it was anything but pleasant to the refinement of which he spoke. "I know, I know," she said impulsively. "I felt terribly the going there the day you saw me; I feel it again now. But indeed I cannot help myself. It was a solemn charge left me by my father, and in going through with it I am but doing my duty. God is over me," she simply added. "I have had a great deal to try me, a great deal to bear! but I am striving to do right under Him."
Her lip quivered as she spoke, and she paused from emotion. It was too much for the stoic philosophy of Oswald Cray. All the old feelings pent up so long, buried only, not subdued, resumed their sway with uncontrollable force, like a torrent let loose down a mountain's side. He caught her hands in his; he bent his face near to hers, its whole expression one of the deepest love; his persuasive voice, trembling with agitation, was sunk to the softest whisper.
"Sara, my dearest, I still love you better than anything on earth. Heaven knows how I have striven to forget you since that cloud fell upon us. It has been of no use. Bereft of you, life is but one long dreary path, growing more cruelly monotonous day by day."
Her heart beat wildly, and for one brief interval a hope, sweeter than any earthly dream, stole into it like a golden ray of sunshine. Only for an instant: she knew that it was but so much deceit, for him as for her.
"Are there no means by which we may forget that cloud and return to the past?" he resumed; his voice hoarse with its emotion, and so low in tone that she could scarcely hear it. "Better to sacrifice a little prejudice than to pass a whole life in dissatisfied pain. Let the dishonour--pardon me for thus alluding to it--rest with the dead: perhaps it has been wrong from the first to make it our sorrow."
She looked at him, not quite understanding. He saw the doubt.
"Be my wife, Sara. I can then take these troubles upon me as my legal right. On my sacred word of honour, I will never cast a reproach to the past, so much as in thought. No! I will not let your hands go until you tell me by word of mouth what I know--that your heart is mine still; that we cannot be faithless one to the other."
She felt faint with the moment's pain. The dewdrops of emotion were gathering on her face, and he would not loose her hands that she might wipe them away.