She raises her eyes slowly, and fixes them searchingly on his eager flushing face; and, looking, can doubt no longer.
"If I was over-harsh to you that night at Felton," he continues, rapidly, "and I am willing now to own that I was—for, after all, it was not against me that you had most greatly sinned—I have, at all events, paid heavily enough for it. What do you suppose I have suffered during the last month, watching you day by day wearing out your young life in a cold servile drudgery—hearing you strain your poor little tired voice in the interminable readings to that insatiable old man! Essie, I'm not a particularly pleasant fellow to live with—sometimes I believe I am particularly unpleasant—but, at my worst, I'm not so bad as old Blessington."
At that she laughs a little, but shakes her head.
"Why do you shake your head?" he asks, manlike, pursuing the hotlier the more she seems to hold back. "Is it," he says (a heavy fear quickening his pulses, and making his voice come thick and harsh), "that you want to tell me by signs, what you dare not tell me in words to my face, that the old love is dead, killed by my hard words that miserable night at Felton? Oh, love! it must have been but a weakly thing, if a few rough words could kill it."
She does not answer.
"You did love me once, Esther," he continues, vehemently; "I know you did! I knew it then, only, in my blind rage, I affected to disbelieve it. You must have loved me, when you, who had always been so shy, so reserved, so maidenly to me, of your own accord—do you recollect, sweet?—held out your arms to me, and flung yourself upon my breast. God only knows how hard it was for me to put you away!"
At the recollection his speech calls up, her face is stirred with a convulsive emotion; but still she holds her peace.
"Esther, speak!—and yet, perhaps, when you have spoken, I shall wish that you had kept silence. Say anything you will, do anything you will, only don't kill me by telling me that so sweet a thing can be dead!"
She lifts her heavy eyes to him, and in them is the look of a hunted animal. "Why do you torment me with these questions?" she asks, passionately. "If my love for you is dead, you ought to be thankful; for, while it was alive, it brought nothing but misery to either of us."
"If you think so, it must indeed be dead," he answers, deeply wounded.