“Cousin Elma has told you how I wanted to speak to you two years ago, and why I didn’t. That’s the reason, Cecil. It was because I loved you, and I didn’t want to get you into trouble, and I have learned to love you more and more since. I do love you, dear, and I have tried to be a better man for your sake. I can’t talk much about that sort of thing, you know, but I do see things more in the way you do than when we first met. But I can’t say it as I should like,” he broke off despairingly. “Whatever I say seems only to show me more and more how utterly presumptuous I am. I know I could never hope that you could care for me as I care for you, because I am such a wretched failure of a fellow, but if you could love me just a little—if you could take me on—well, just as a sort of pupil, you know—but I don’t mean that at all. Will you marry me, Cecil?”
“And if I say no?” asked Cecil, looking away over the river.
“Now you are trying me, to see what I shall say,” he said. “You know, if I said what I feel, it would be that I should throw up this place at once and go off into the desert with the Arabs; and I know that what you would like me to say would be that I should go on here working steadily, as if nothing had happened. Well, dear, I will try, but it will be awfully hard.”
Cecil was touched to the heart. “Oh, Charlie, my poor boy!” she cried, impulsively, and put her hands into his. He took them doubtfully, not daring to accept the happy omen the action suggested.
“Cecil, is it really—do you mean yes?” he asked, with bated breath.
“Yes, I do,” said Cecil, hurriedly. “I have been a horrid, calculating, conceited wretch. I’ve looked down on you, and laughed at you, and never thought how much better you were than I was all the time. I wish I was more worthy of you, Charlie.”
“You? of me?” he asked. “Cecil, dear, don’t laugh at me now. You really mean that you can love me? I don’t want you to marry me out of pity, or anything that would make you unhappy. I can stand anything rather than that.”
“But I do mean yes,” murmured Cecil, brokenly.
“But you are crying,” he said, with a man’s usual tact in such matters.
“I’m not,” said Cecil, indignantly. “Well, I suppose I’m homesick. No, it’s not that. It’s because I have been wanting you so much all this time, and you have come back at last.”