"I should not have denied it--no; my friends are welcome here," replied Mary, feeling just as agitated as he, but successfully repressing its signs. "You have, no doubt, some good reason for seeking me."
She spoke with one of her sweetest smiles: the smile that she was wont to give to her best friends. How well he remembered it!
"You have heard--at least I fancy you must have heard--some news of me," resumed Sir William, speaking with considerable embarrassment and hesitation. "It has been made very public."
Mary coloured now. About a fortnight before, Mr. Knivett had told her that the projected marriage of Sir William with Miss Mountsorrel was at an end. The two lovers had quarrelled and parted. Sir William sat looking at Mary, either waiting for her answer, or because he hesitated to go on.
"I heard that something had occurred to interrupt your plans," said Mary. "It is only a temporary interruption, I trust."
"It is a lasting one," he said; "and I do not wish it to be otherwise. Oh, Mary!" he added, rising in agitation, "you know, you must know, how hateful it was to me! I entered into it to please my father; I never had an iota of love for her. Love! the very word is desecrated in connection with what I felt for Miss Mountsorrel. I really and truly had not even friendship for her; I could not feel it. When we parted, I felt like a man who has been relieved from some heavy weight of dull despair; it was as though I had shaken off a felon's chains."
"What caused it?" questioned Mary, feeling that she must say something.
"Coolness caused it. For the very life of me I was unable to behave to her as I ought--as I suppose she had a right to expect me to behave. Since my father's death I had been more distant than ever, for I could not help remembering the fact that, had I held out against his will until then, I should have been free: and I resented it bitterly in my heart. Resented it on her, I fear. She reproached me with my coolness one day--some two or three weeks ago, it is. One word led to another; we had a quarrel and she threw me up."
"I am sorry to hear it," said Mary.
"Can you say that from your heart?"