"Yes, dear. If it had not been for your letter which I could feel against my breast I should have been frightened…. Because all your family were together under the pergola…. As it was I could scarcely speak; I gave your mother the letter, and when she had read it and your father and your sister had read it, I asked them what I was to do.
"It was so strange and still there under the pergola; and I scarcely knew what I was saying—and I didn't realise that there were tears in my eyes—until I saw them in your mother's, too.
"Louis! Louis! I wonder if she can really ever care for me!—she was so good—so sweet to me…. And Mrs. Collis took me away to her own room—after your father had shaken hands with me—very stiffly but I think kindly—and I behaved very badly, dear—and your sister let me cry—all that I needed to."
She said nothing more for a while, resting in his arms, dark eyes fixed on space. Then:
"They asked me to remain; your brother-in-law is a dear!—but I still had a long day of self-examination before me. Your father and mother walked with me to the gate. Your mother kissed me."
His eyes, blinded by tears, scarcely saw her; and she turned her head and smiled at him.
"What they said to me was very sweet and patient, Louis…. I believe—I sometimes believe that I may, in time, win more than their consent, I believe that, some day, they will care to think of me as your wife—and think of me as such, kindly, without regret for what might have been if I had never known you."
CHAPTER XVIII
Hélène d'Enver had gone back to the country, and Ogilvy dared not pursue her thither.
From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and Ogilvy replied valiantly from a perfectly safe distance, vowing that he meant to marry her some day in spite of herself and threatening to go up and tell her so to her face, until she became bored to death waiting for him to fulfil this threat.