“A name?” she echoed scornfully. “What store do you think I lay by that? When you talk so, you obey some foolish prejudice; no more.”
“Obedience to prejudices is the whole art of living,” he answered, sighing.
She made a gesture of impatience, and went on. “Justin, you said you loved me; and when you said so much, you gave me the right—or so I understood it—to speak to you as I am doing now. You are alone in the world, without kith or kin. The only one you had—the one who represented all for you—lies buried there. Would you return thus, lonely and alone, to France?”
“Ah, now I understand!” he cried. “Now I understand. Pity is the impulse that has urged you—pity for my loneliness, is't not, Hortensia?”
“I'll not deny that without the pity there might not have been the courage. Why should I—since it is a pity that gives you no offense, a pity that is rooted firmly in—in love for you, my Justin?”
He set his hands upon her shoulders, and with glowing eyes regarded her. “Ah, sweet!” said he, “you make me very, very proud.”
And then his arms dropped again limply to his sides. He sighed, and shook his head drearily. “And yet—reflect. When I come to beg your hand in marriage of your guardian, what shall I answer him of the questions he will ask me of myself—touching my family, my parentage and all the rest that he will crave to know?”
She observed that he was very white again. “Need you enter into that? A man is himself; not his father or his family.” And then she checked. “You make me plead too much,” she said, a crimson flood in her fair cheeks. “I'll say no more than I have said. Already have I said more than I intended. And you have wanted mercy that you could drive me to it. You know my mind—my—my inmost heart. You know that I care nothing for your namelessness. It is yours to decide what you will do. Come, now; my chair is staying for me.”
He bowed; he sought again to convey some sense of his appreciation of her great nobility; then led her through the gate and to her waiting chair.
“Whatever I may decide, Hortensia” was the last thing he said to her, “and I shall decide as I account best for you, rather than for myself; and for myself there needs no thought or hesitation—whatever I may decide, believe me when I say from my soul that all my life shall be the sweeter for this hour.”