“I said respect. Is it so presumptuous an idea?” said Randall, with his cold sarcastic smile.
But Menie made no answer. Drawing back with a timid frightened motion, which did not belong to her natural character, she stood so very pale, and chill, and tearful, that you could have found nowhere a more complete and emphatic contrast than she made to her betrothed. The one so full of strength and vigour, stout independence and glowing resentment—the other with all her life gone out of her, as it seemed, quenched and subdued in her tears.
“You have avoided me in the house—you will not speak to me now,” said Randall. “Menie, Menie, what does this mean?”
For Menie had not been able to conceal from him that she was weeping.
“It is no matter, Randall,” said Menie; “it is no matter.”
Randall grew more and more excited. “What is the matter? Have you ceased to trust me, Menie? What do you mean?”
“I mean nothing to make you angry—I never did,” said Menie, sadly. “I’m not very old yet, but I never grieved anybody, of my own will, all my days. Ill never came long ago; or, if it came, nobody ever blamed it on me. I wish you would not mind me,” she said, looking up suddenly. “I came out here, because my mind was not fit to speak to anybody—because I wanted to complain to myself where nobody should hear of my unthankfulness. I would not have said a word to anybody—not a word. There was no harm in thinking within my own heart.”
“There is harm in hiding your thoughts from me,” said Randall. “Come, Menie, you are not to cheat me of my rights. I was angry—forgive me; but I am not angry now. Menie, my poor sorrowful girl, what ails you? Has something happened? Menie, you must tell me.”
“It is just you I must not tell,” said Menie, under her breath. Then she wavered a moment, as if the wind swayed her light figure, and held her in hesitating uncertainty; and then, with a sudden effort, she stood firm, apart from the wall she had been leaning on, and apart, too, from Randall’s extended arm.
“Yes, I will tell you,” said Menie, seriously. “You mind what happened a year ago, Randall: you mind what we did and what we said then—‘For ever and for ever.’”