"Just a moment, William," she interrupted, lifting her hand pleadingly. "Let me think it out."
There were worldly reasons also why she should not yield, she went on to think: ay, and perhaps social ones. What would the public say if, during this temporary estrangement from Agatha Mountsorrel, this trumpery quarrel, she were to seize upon him again with indecent haste, and make him her own? What would her own sense of right say to it?--her maidenly propriety?--her untarnished spirit of honour? No, it could not be: the world might cry shame on her, and she should cry it on herself. Sir William Blake-Gordon interrupted her with his impassioned words. This moment, as it should be decided, seemed to be to him as one of life or death.
"William, hush!" she said, gazing at him through her blinding tears, and clasping his hands, in which hers still rested, almost to pain in her mind's anguish. "It may not be."
"Sit you down, my love, and be calm. I am sure you are hardly conscious of what you say. Oh, Mary, reflect! It is our whole life's happiness that is at stake: yours and mine."
They sat down side by side; and when her emotion had subsided she told him why it might not, giving all the reasons for her decision, and speaking quietly and firmly. He pleaded as though he were pleading for life itself, as well as its happiness: but he pleaded in vain. All the while she was repeating to herself that verse of warning, as if she dreaded letting it go from her for a moment.
"We will be as dear brother and sister, William, esteeming each other unto our lives' end, and meeting occasionally. You will still marry Agatha----"
"Mary!"
"Yes, I think it will be so; and I hope and trust you will be happy together. I am sure you will be."
"Our time together is short enough to-day, Mary. Do not waste it in these idle words. If you knew how they grate on me!"
"Well, I will leave that. But you must not waste your life in impossible thoughts of me and of what might have been. It would render impracticable our intercourse as friends. Thank you for what you have come this day to say: it will make my heart happier when its tumult and agitation shall be over."