“Oh!” she cried, in her desperation, “do not stop to argue about it. Don’t you see—but you must see—that you are making me miserable? If there is anything you want, tell me; but oh, do not stay here!”
“What I want is easily enough divined. I want you, Margaret,” he said; “and why should you turn me away? Let us not spend the little time we have together in quarrelling. You are offended about something. Somebody has been speaking ill of me—”
“No one has been speaking ill of you,” she cried, indignantly. “Oh, Mr. Glen, even if I liked you to be here, it would be dishonorable to come when my sister Jean was away, and to impose upon poor Grace, who knows nothing, who does not understand—”
“Let me tell her,” he said, eagerly; “she will be a friend to us; she is kind-hearted. Let me tell her. It is not I that wish for concealment; I should like the whole world to know. I will go and tell her—”
“No!” Margaret cried, almost with a scream of terror. She stopped him as he made a step toward the door. “What would you tell her, or any one?—that I—care for you, Mr. Glen? Oh, listen to me! It is not that I have deceived you, for I never said anything; I only let you speak— But if I have done wrong, I am very sorry; if you told her that, it would not be true!”
“Margaret,” he said, with forced calmness, “take care what you are saying. Do you forget that you are my promised wife? Is that nothing to tell her? Do you think that I will let you break your vow without a word. There is more than love concerned, more than caring for each other, as you call it—there is our whole life!”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sank to a whisper, in her extreme emotion; her face grew pallid, as if she were going to faint. She clasped her hands together and looked at him piteously, with wide-open eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I know; I promised, and I am false to it. Oh, will you forgive me, and let me go free? Oh, Mr. Glen, let me go free!”
“Is this all I have for my love?” he said, with not unnatural exasperation. “Let you go free! that is all you care for. What I feel is nothing to you; my hopes, and my prospects, and my happiness—”
Margaret could not speak. She made a supplicating gesture with her clasped hands, and kept her eyes fixed upon him. Rob did not know what to do. He paced up and down the room in unfeigned agitation; outraged pride and disappointed feeling, and an impulse which was half generosity and half mortification tempting him on one side, while the rage of failure and the force of self-interest held him fast on the other. He could not give up so much without another struggle. He made a hasty step toward her and caught her hands in his.
“Margaret!” he cried, “how can I give you up? This hand is mine, and I will not let it go. Is there nothing in your promise—nothing in the love that has been between us? Let you go free? Is that all the question that remains between you and me?”