“Miss Vere,” he said, “would you mind putting down your work for a few minutes and listening to something I have got to say?” Miss Vere did as she was requested, and Geoffrey continued. “I did not think that day that—that you were angry with me, I did not think then that I could ever bring myself to risk your anger again. But it is no use. It is worse than ever with me—this wretchedness of being near you and yet to know it is all hopeless. What I want to say to you is that I cannot stand it. Your illness was so terrible to me; it showed me even more clearly than before how insane I am about it. I can’t stay near you in this way, Marion. Humbugging about friendship and all that, when I know that twenty million friendships would not express a particle of my utter devotion to you. I can’t, say it, well. I am abominably stupid and boorish. Only I want to tell you that I must go away. I shall look after your interests to very best of my power; only have some mercy on me, and don’t try me in this terrible way by asking me to stay near you.”
He rose in his earnestness and came nearer her. His tall, strong figure shaken with emotion, his handsome face quivering with the strength of his conflicting feelings. Marion was far too tender of heart to tantalize or try him unnecessarily. She too rose and stood beside him. What a slight, fragile creature she seemed, and yet probably the stronger of the two in much that constitutes real strength of nature!
She spoke very quietly and calmly.
“Dear Mr. Baldwin,” she said, “I am more grieved, more deeply pained than I can possibly put in words, to know that I have caused you suffering. I was rough and hasty that day, but I have changed since then. I will not ask you to stay near me if it is painful to you. But you must decide for yourself after hearing what I want to tell you.”
Then in a few simple words, she sketched for him the history of her life and its great disappointment. She entered into no particulars. At the end of her narration Geoffrey was perfectly ignorant as to when and where all this had happened. Nor did he in the least care to know. He was conscious only of the one great central fact. Marion, his Marion, for whom he would have died, had loved some one else as he loved her. It was a great blow to him, for it was altogether unexpected. The words in which she had before repulsed him, had not to him, as to Veronica’s quicker perception, told of anything of this sort. In his simplicity he had understood them only as referring, with the exaggeration of youth, to her father’s death and the many troubles consequent upon it. He had intended no special allusion when he said something about at the probability of her before long choosing another guardian. He had perfectly understood that she did not care for him in any but a friendly way; but it had never struck him that already her affections had been elsewhere bestowed. She was so young! And Harry had all but told him how cordially he approved of the idea, and had tacitly encouraged him in his suit.
For some minutes Geoffrey made no reply. He stood leaning on the chair from which Marion had lately risen, thinking deeply, doing his honest best to see light through this matter. Then the same question rose to his lips as had occurred to Miss Veronica.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but tell me one thing. This man whom you have spoken of to me—do you still love him, Marion? I do not ask or expect you to say you could ever care for me as you have done for him. That, I understand would be impossible. Only to some extent I must know my own chance. So tell me, my poor darling, do you still love him?”
And Marion the second time made the answer, “As I know myself I do not love him now.”
Then said Geoffrey—
“If so, my darling, I am not afraid. If the whole devotion of my being can win you to love me, if ever so little, I shall be well repaid. And at least I can make your life a degree less lonely; in time even this sorrow of the past may, to some measure, fade away? Your brave truthfulness has only made me love you more. And at least, my Marion, you do not dislike me?