‘What ought to be you and I?’ she faltered, lost in confusion and amazement.
He was standing before her, not lover-like, but absorbed, pressing his subject, and paying no special regard to her. ‘It ought to be you and I to build up the old house. No. I cannot think any man has a right to come in and interfere. But only just there is this one thing to be said. Whatever is for your happiness, Mary, I will carry out with all my might. If you should set your heart on one thing or another, it shall be done; but still that does not affect the question,—it ought to be you and me.’
‘For what?’ she asked again.
‘For what? Oh, for more than I can tell,’ said Ben; ‘to build up this old house, as I told you,—to get through life. I must always have felt it, though I did not know. And here is this fellow come in with his wild backwoods way, and thinks he can win you off-hand. I don’t say a word if it is for your happiness; but I know it should be you and me.’
And then there was a pause, and Ben walked up and down the little vacant space in front of the seat he had placed her in, with his eyes bent on the ground, and his face moody and full of trouble. As for Mary, she sat and gazed at him, half-conscious only, worn out by excitement and wonder, and the succession of shocks of one kind and another which she had been receiving, but with a soft sense of infinite ease and consolation stealing over her confused heart. It was that relief from pain which feels to the sufferer like positive blindness. She had not even known how deep the pain in her was until she felt it stealing in upon her,—this ineffable ease and freedom from it, which is more sweet than actual joy.
‘Ben,’ she said at last, when she could get breath. ‘It is very difficult for me to follow you, and you confuse me so that I don’t know. But, about Mr. Hillyard you are all wrong. I never saw him till Monday. I never thought about him at all. I was very sorry. But it is not as if I could blame myself. I was not to blame.’
‘To blame! How could you be to blame?’ said Ben, and he came and stood before her again, gazing at her with that strange look which Mary did not recognise in him, and could not meet.
‘I should never have mentioned it to any one,’ she said. ‘I would not now, though you question me so. But only it is best you should not have anything on your mind. Is,—that,—all?’
It was not coquetry which suggested the question; it was her reason that began utterly to fail her. She did not seem to know what it was he had said besides,—though he had said something.
‘Ah!’ he cried vehemently, and then paused and subdued himself, ‘all except my answer, Mary,’ he said, softly stooping over her.