He would have put his arm round her, thinking to overcome her bashfulness, thinking that this was but maidenly pride, waiting to be conquered. But she freed herself with unexpected vigor and slipped from him. “No, I don’t wish it!” she said. And her attitude and her tone were so resolute, that he could no longer deceive himself. “No! Listen, Arthur.” She was pale, but there was a surprising firmness in her face. “Listen! I do not believe that you love me. You have given me no cause to think so these many months. Such a boy and girl affection as was once between us might have grown into love in time, had you wished it. But you did not seem to wish it, and it has not. What you feel is not love.”
“You know so much about love!” he scoffed. He was taken aback, but he tried to laugh—tried to pass it off.
But she did not give way. “I know what love is,” she answered firmly. And then, without apparent cause, a burning blush rose to her very hair. Yet, in defiance of this, she repeated her words. “I know what love is, and I do not believe that you feel it for me. And I am sure, quite sure, Arthur,” in a lower tone, “that I do not feel it for you. I could not be your wife.”
“Jos!” he pleaded earnestly. “You are joking! Surely you are joking.”
“No, I am not joking. I do not wish to hurt you. I am grieved if I do hurt you. But that is the truth. I do not want to marry you.”
He stared at her. At last she had compelled him to believe her, and he reddened with anger; only to turn pale, a moment later, as a picture of himself humiliated and rejected, his plans spoiled by the fancy of this foolish girl, rose before him. He could not understand it; it seemed incredible. And there must be some reason? Desperately he clutched at the thought that she was afraid of her father. She had not grasped the fact that the Squire had sanctioned his suit, and, controlling his voice as well as he could, “Are you really in earnest, Jos?” he said. “Do you understand that your father is willing? That it is indeed his wish that we should marry?”
“I cannot help it.”
“But—love?” Though he tried to keep his temper his voice was growing sharp. “What, after all, do you know of—love?” And rapidly his mind ran over the possibilities. No, there could be no one else. She knew few, and among them no one who could have courted her without his knowledge. For, strange to say, no inkling of the meetings between Clement and his cousin had reached him. They had all taken place within a few weeks, they had ceased some months back, and though there were probably some in the house who had seen things and drawn their conclusions, the favorers of young love are many, and no one save Thomas had tried to make mischief. No, there could be no one, he decided; it was just a silly girl’s romantic notion. “And how can you say,” he continued, “that mine is not real love? What do you know of it? Believe me, Jos, you are playing with your happiness. And with mine.”
“I do not think so,” she answered gravely. “As to my own, I am sure, Arthur. I do not love you and I cannot marry you.”
“And that is your answer?”