“I know you did, and I will never doubt it. In bygone days, my darling, I was foolish and wicked, and played with the truest love ever given to woman. But I am wiser now. You must never doubt me. Promise me that you never will.”
“I promise you,” he said, and closed his lips.
“My dear, my dear,” she said softly to herself, and stopped for a moment before she went on aloud, “I must go to town this afternoon, and you must take me. My courage is not equal to encountering the journey alone. Do take me, my darling.”
“Where will you go when you get to London?” he asked.
“I know of some apartments—two rooms—I saw them the day before I came away. If they are still unlet, I shall rent them. But when we arrive I shall go straight to Sir William Rammage. I have business with him. He is very ill, Alfred, it was in the paper yesterday; but he will see me, and when he knows all——”
“You will tell him nothing about me,” he said, in his slow determined voice. She looked up indignantly.
“Alfred,” she answered, “I must tell him. I shall tell him that you love me; that I have won a true and noble heart, and that we are going through life together.”
“You will tell him nothing,” Mr. Wimple repeated, with something like fright in his dull eyes. “If you did my uncle would hear of it, and would think I was mad.” He added the clause about his uncle as if he thought an explanation due to her.
“Mad to marry me?” she asked.
“Mad to think of marriage at all. He objects to it on principle.”