“Rose,” quietly said Mr. Incledon, “spare me what you can of these discussions—you had pledged your word?”
She drew away half frightened, not expecting the harsher tone in his voice, though she had expected him to “be angry,” as she said. “Forgive me,” she went on, subdued, “I was so disappointed that it made me wild. I did not know what to do. I could not see any reason for it now—any good in it; and, at last, when I was almost crazy with thinking, I—ran away.”
“You ran away?”—Mr. Incledon raised his head, indignant. “Your mother has lied all round,” he said, fiercely; then, bethinking himself, “I beg your pardon. Mrs. Damerel no doubt had her reasons for what she said.”
“There was only one place I could go to,” said Rose, timidly, “Miss Margetts’, where I was at school. I went up to the station for the early train that nobody might see me. I was very much frightened. Some one was standing there; I did not know who he was—he came by the train, I think; but after I had got into the carriage he came in after me. Mr. Incledon! it was not his fault, neither his nor mine. I had not been thinking of him. It was not for him, but only not to be married—to be free”—
“Of me,” he said, with a bitter smile; “but in short, you met, whether by intention or not—and Mr. Wodehouse took advantage of his opportunities?”
“He told me,” said Rose, not looking at Mr. Incledon, “what I had known ever so long without being told; but I said nothing to him; what could I say? I told him all that had happened. He took me to Miss Margetts’, and there we parted,” said Rose, with a momentary pause and a deep sigh.
“Since then I have done nothing but think and think. No one has come near me—no one has written to me. I have been left alone to go over and over it all in my own mind. I have done so till I was nearly mad, or at least, everything seemed going round with me and everything confused, and I could not tell what was right and what was wrong. Oh!” cried Rose, lifting her head in natural eloquence, with eyes which looked beyond him, and a certain elevation and abstraction in her face, “I don’t think it is a thing in which only right and wrong are to be considered. When you love one and do not love another, it must mean something; and to marry unwillingly, that is nothing to content a man. It is a wrong to him; it is not doing right; it is treating him unkindly, cruelly! It is as if he wanted you, anyhow, like a cat or a dog; not as if he wanted you worthily, as his companion.” Rose’s courage failed her after this little outburst; her high looks came down, her voice sank and faltered, her head drooped. She rose up, and clasping her hands together, went on in low tones: “Mr. Incledon, I am engaged to you; I belong to you. I trust your justice and your kindness more than anything else. If you say I am to marry you, I will do it. Take it now into your own hands. If I think of it any more I will go mad; but I will do whatever you say.”
He was walking up and down the room, with his face averted, and with pain and anger and humiliation in his heart. All this time he had believed he was leading Rose towards the reasonable love for him which was all he hoped for. He had supposed himself in almost a lofty position, offering to this young, fresh, simple creature more in every way than she could ever have had but for him—a higher position, a love more noble than any foolish boy-and-girl attachment. To find out in a moment how very different the real state of the case had been, and to have conjured up before him the picture of a martyr-girl, weeping and struggling, and a mother “with a host of petty maxims preaching down her daughter’s heart,” was intolerable to him. He had never been so mortified, so humbled in all his life. He walked up and down the room in a ferment, with that sense of the unbearable which is so bitter. Unbearable!—yet to be borne somehow; a something not to be ignored or cast off. It said much for Rose’s concluding appeal that he heard it at all, and took in the meaning of it in his agitation and hot, indignant rage; but he did hear it, and it touched him. “If you say I am to marry you, I will do it.” He stopped short in his impatient walk. Should he say it—in mingled despite and love—and keep her to her word? He came up to her and took her clasped hands within his, half in anger, half in tenderness, and looked her in the face.
“If I say you are to marry me, you will do it? You pledge yourself to that? You will marry me if I please?”
“Yes,” said Rose, very pale, looking up at him steadfastly. She neither trembled nor hesitated. She had gone beyond any superficial emotion.