"Oh, mayn't I go!—and beg Lord William—"
"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say—My father's an old man. This has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, as he would himself. And now—in addition—you want him to do something that he feels to be wrong."
"But Edward, they are married! Isn't it a tyranny"—she brought the word out bravely—"when it causes so much suffering!—to insist on more than the law does?"
"For us there is but one law—the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of stern conviction: "For us they are not married—and we should be conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I can't discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress.
She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate hopelessness—not without resentment—was rising in her.
"Then you won't try to persuade your father—even for my sake, Edward?"
He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind.
The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said—in a low, lingering voice:
"And I—I couldn't marry—and be happy—with the thought always—of what had happened to them—and how—you couldn't give me—what I asked. I have been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward—we—we've made a great mistake!"
She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet with something new—and resolute—in her aspect.