"I bade him come here for my answer," she continues. "He will be here in a few minutes. I wish you to remain in the large library, so that you may hear all that I say to him."
"I cannot do that. I cannot play the part of eavesdropper."
"You will play that part, or any other that I ask you, if you love me," she says, with a touch of imperiousness.
"Do you not see," she goes on, with more gentleness, "that if our lives are to be passed near each other (I do not say that they are, but you seem to wish it), you must first of all be convinced of the truth of all I tell you? If one doubt, one suspicion, remain, you will, in time, become unable to banish it. It would grow and grow until you were mastered by it. You believe in what I tell you now; but how long would you believe after marriage?"
"I want no proof: I only want your word. Nay, I do not even want that. I will ask you nothing. I swear that I will never ask you anything."
"That is very beautiful; and I am sure that you mean it now. But it could not last. You are a very proud man; you are gentilhomme de race. It would in time become intolerable to you if you believed that any one living man had any title to point a finger of scorn at you. You have a right to know what my relations were with Lord Gervase: it is necessary for all the peace of our future that you should know everything,—know that there is nothing more left for you to know. You can only be convinced of that if you yourself hear what I say to him. Go; and wait there."
Brandolin hesitates. To listen unseen is a part which seems very cowardly to him, and yet she is right, no doubt; all the peace of the future may depend on it. He is ready to pledge himself blindly in the dark in all ways, but he knows that she, in forbidding him to do so, speaks the word of wisdom, of foresight, and of truth.
"Go," she repeats. "Men have a thousand ways of proving the truth of whatever they say; we have none, or next to none. If you refuse me this, the sole poor evidence that I can produce, I will never be to you anything that you now wish. Never; that I swear to you."
He hesitates, and looks at her with a long inquiring regard. Then he bows, and goes.
After all, she is within her rights. She has no other means to show him with any proof what this man whose name is so odiously entangled with her own has, or has not, been to her.