In four or five minutes Eleanor had recovered her calmness. "You asked me to meet you here, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "having something, I presume, that you wish to say to me, and here am I monopolising your time with my own selfish troubles. But you must forgive me this once, and I will not offend again."
"You are right. I have something to say to you," said Gerald, earnestly. "Sir Thomas has told me everything. You are no longer the heiress people believed you to be. You are poor like myself. Pray pardon my frankness; but that very poverty it is that gives me courage to speak." He paused for a moment, and in the pause they both heard the plashing of a tiny fountain in the distance, and the crabbed voice of old Sanderson crooning some old-world ballad to himself as he bent over his work.
"Several weeks ago, in a moment of forgetfulness," resumed Gerald, "I said certain words to you which, bearing in mind the reason that first brought me to Stammars, ought never to have been said by me. I confessed my fault, and you forgave me. Since that time, whatever my feelings may have been, I have so far schooled myself as not to offend again. Now the case is different. No one can say now that I seek you for your money. The reason which has kept me silent so long exists no longer. To-day--here--now--I can tell you how dearly I love you--how dearly I have loved you from the moment I first saw you! Here, to-day, I ask you whether you can give me back love for love, heart for heart--whether you can learn to care for me sufficiently to share your poverty with my poverty and to become my wife?"
Again he stooped and kissed her hand, but she would not let him keep it. Her eyes were wet, her bosom heaving. Her colour came and went, then left her altogether. Twice she tried to speak, but could not.
"Oh, Mr. Pomeroy," she said at last, "your words have come upon me so suddenly that indeed I know not how to answer them! Your pride would not let you seek me when you believed me to be rich: my pride will not let me give myself to you now that I am poor."
"But supposing," said Gerald, "that I had come to you at eleven o'clock this morning--supposing I had come to you five minutes before Miss Deane delivered her message, and had asked you then to become my wife, what would your answer have been?"
This was a question that seemed to require consideration.
"When you asked me to meet you here, I thought you had something to tell me. I did not know that I was coming here to be catechised."
"What I had to tell you I have told. To you, perhaps, it seems hardly worth the hearing. To me it means everything."
She turned her eyes for a moment on his. Their glance seemed to say, "Pity my embarrassment, and don't say cruel things to me."