“I want no other reward but to hear you say that. But you must not praise me overmuch, for I have done nothing but my plain and simple duty. When I look back on it, it has seemed an easy thing to do. There was no risk like what I ran with Sarsfield´s troopers, when you--nay, I had not thought to have awakened that memory.”
“I have not forgotten that either,” she said, “I was a girl then, but I am a woman, and I think a very old woman, now,” she added with a sad smile. “I owe you a great deal since we first met. I shall never be able to repay you, but when we part, and perhaps I shall not see you again, I shall remember your kindness as long as I live.”
“We have not parted yet,” said Gervase, trying to take her hand. “Dorothy, I have come here to speak what I have not dared to say before. Nay, nay, you must listen to me, for all our life depends on it. From the first moment that we met, I have had one thought, one hope. I have watched you in silence, for it was not a time to talk of love. Every day on duty, every night on guard, you have been with me consoling and sustaining me. I have no words to tell you all that I would tell you. I have reproached myself for my selfishness. While others were overcome with their misery, I went about with a light and joyous heart; it was enough for me to be near you, to feel your presence, to serve you with my life. Dorothy, I love you.”
“Oh! I cannot hear you,” she cried, rising to her feet and hiding her face in her hands; “it is wrong for me to listen to you.”
“Nay, nay, my best beloved, you shall listen to me,” he went on, with all a lover´s gentle but fierce insistence. “You have spoken words that you cannot recall. All the night in the river and in the woods they rang like music in my ears, and kept my heart from failing in me. I knew you loved me.”
“I will not hear you,” she cried; “they were weak words and wicked. I had no right to speak them.”
“But they were true,” he said, with no clue to her meaning, “and I will hold you to your words. I dare not let you go; there is nothing stands between us and nothing will.”
“Everything stands between us.” Then with a great effort she calmed herself and went on gently, “My words were wrung from me, I should not have spoken them, but I stand by them--they were the truth. I do love you. Nay, you must hear me out; you must not come nearer, now nor ever again. When they were spoken I had no right to speak them; I was the betrothed wife of Victor De Laprade.”
He stared at her incredulously.
“I was alone; there was no one to whom I could go for advice. I was only a girl; I did not know my own heart. Then the Vicomte de Laprade was struck down unfairly by my brother to whom he had given back his fortune and--and I thought he was going to die. What reparation I could make, it was my duty and my will to make. I had not thought of love--or you. Oh! why did you speak to me?”