‘Not all,’ said Millicent, ‘oh, indeed, not all! Poor Fitzgerald! But we have so many things to think of. There is no more amusement for poor mamma and me.’
‘Amusement is a poor sort of thing,’ said Ben. ‘You don’t think I meant balls and operas? I am not such a wretched fellow as that. What I meant was, if—if you would but try to look round you, and see that there are others in the world——’ here he made a pause, half out of awe of the words that were on his lips, half with a lover’s device to fix her attention upon them, half because of the grasp of passion upon himself which impeded his breathing and his voice,—‘who love you,’ said Ben at last, abruptly, ‘as well,—ten thousand times better than any brother in the world.’
He was not thinking of Hamlet,—but passion is something like genius, and finds a similar expression now and then in very absence of all thought.
‘Ah, Mr. Renton,’ said Millicent, ‘you must not say those sort of things to me. Poor, dear Fitzgerald was not so very fond of me. Some women get loved like that, but I don’t think I am one of them. Hush now! If you are going to speak nonsense I must send you away.’
‘It is no nonsense,’ said Ben. ‘If you could but have seen my heart all the time I have been here! It has had no thought but one. I know I am a fool to say so,—if I were a prince instead of a disinherited knight—— ’
‘Disinherited?’ said Millicent, losing in a moment the soft droop of her hand, the soft fall of her eyelids,—all those tender indications of a modest emotion,—sitting bolt upright and looking him straight in the face. ‘Mr. Renton, what do you mean?’
The suddenness of the change gave him a certain thrill. He did not understand it, nor had he time at such a moment to pause and ask himself what it meant. He felt the jar all over him, but went on all the same. ‘Yes, I am disinherited,’ he said, leaning over her, meeting her startled glance with eyes full of such a real and fiery glow of passion as struck her dumb. ‘If it had not been so, could I have borne to keep silent all this time and never say a word to you? I am a wretch to say anything now. I have been a fool to come here. Now I think of it, I have no right to any answer. I have nothing—nothing to offer. But, Millicent, let me tell you,—don’t deny me that,—this once!’
‘Mr. Renton,’ said Millicent, ‘I do not know what you have to tell me. It is so strange, all this. And I have been thinking all the time you were—— Never mind speaking to me about myself; that does not interest me. Tell me about this.’
‘I will tell you everything,’ said Ben, ‘and then you will give me my sentence,—death or life,—that is what it will be. Don’t take up your work. Oh, how can you be so calm, you women? Cannot you see what it is to me;—death or life?’
Millicent looked up at him, dropping her work hesitatingly on her knee. When he met that glance, the blue eyes looked so wondering, so wistful, so innocent, that poor Ben in his madness got down on his knees and kissed the hand that lay in her lap and the muslin that surrounded it, and cried out, with a kind of sweet heart-break;—‘Yes, it is right you should be calm; I love you best so. For me, the earth and the passions; for you, heaven. I agree,—that is what God must have meant.’