“And you are sure that you will not change your mind again?”
There was that in her voice, though he could not see her face, which brought him across two squares of the carpet as if she had jerked him with a string. In a second he was on his knees beside her, and had laid a feverish hand on hers. “Mary,” he cried, “Mary!” seeking to look up into her face, “you will! You will! You will let me take you? You will let me take you from here! I cannot offer you what I once thought I could, but I have enough, and, you will?” There was a desperate supplication in his voice; for close to her, so close that his breath was on her cheek, she seemed, with her half-averted face and her slender figure, so dainty a thing, so delicate and rare, that he could hardly believe that she could ever be his, that he could be so lucky as to possess her, that he could ever take her in his arms. “You will? You will?” he repeated, empty of all other words.
She did not speak, she could not speak. But she bowed her head.
“You will?”
She turned her eyes on him then; eyes so tender and passionate that they seemed to draw his heart, his being, his strength out of him. “Yes,” she whispered shyly. “If I am allowed.”
“Allowed? Allowed?” he cried. How in a moment was all changed for him! “I would like to see——” And then breaking off—perhaps it was her fault for leaning a little towards him—he did that which he had thought a moment before that he would never dare to do. He put his arm round her and drew her gently and reverently to him until—for she did not resist—her head lay on his shoulder. “Mine!” he murmured, “Mine! Mine! Mary, I can hardly believe it. I can hardly think I am so blest.”
“And you will not change?” she whispered.
“Never! Never!”
They were silent. Was she thinking of the dark night, when she had walked lonely and despondent to her new and unknown home? Or of many another hour of solitary depression, spent in dull and dreary schoolrooms, while others made holiday? Was he thinking of his doubts and fears, his cowardly hesitation? Or only of his present monstrous happiness? No matter. At any rate, they had forgotten the existence of anything outside the room, they had forgotten the world and Miss Sibson, they were in a Paradise of their own, such as is given to no man and to no woman more than once, they were a million miles from Bristol City, when the sound made by the opening door surprised them in that posture. Vaughan turned fiercely to see who it was, to see who dared to trespass on their Eden. He looked, only looked, and he sprang to his feet, amazed. He thought for a moment that he was dreaming, or that he was mad.
For on the threshold, gazing at them with a face of indescribable astonishment, rage and incredulity, was Sir Robert Vermuyden. Sir Robert Vermuyden, the one last man in the world whom Arthur Vaughan would have expected to see there!