“It may seem so to you because our only previous interviews have been stormy and cold, and my expressed opinions were offensive, though you were generous enough to say that you agreed with them. But from those interviews I bore away an impression against which I contended in vain. As long as you were the heiress or holder of Mr. Massarene’s fortune, my lips were sealed. But now that you stand in voluntary and honorable poverty, looking forward to work for your living when your mother dies, I see nothing to prevent my saying to you what I have said.”
“I am not less my father’s daughter.”
“No, and I will not say what is untrue. I wish that you were the daughter of any other man. But in the East I have seen beautiful lilies growing out of heaps of potsherds. You are the lily which I wish to gather. Your purity and stately grace are your own; your fine temper and you unsullied character are your own. William Massarene is dead. Let his sins be buried with him. After all, he was not worse than the great world which flattered and plundered him. You have done all you could to atone for his crimes. Do not let his ghost arise to stand between you and me. That is, at least, if you could care for me. Perhaps it is impossible.”
She breathed heavily; she felt faint; her sight was obscured.
“You say this to me, to me, to the daughter of William Massarene?”
“I will not lie to you; I wish to Heaven you were the daughter of any other man. But his vileness cannot affect your honor. You know me very slightly, and I insulted you when we did meet. But there are sympathies which overstep time and efface all injuries. As long as you held your father’s fortune I could say nothing to you; but now there is no barrier between us unless it exist in your own will.”
“But there is your sister!”
His face darkened.
“If you mean the Duchess of Otterbourne, I have no acquaintance with her.”
“But all your family?”