"It is even as I have told you," he said.
"It was I who Miss Bellamy sent for when she became alarmed by Kelvin's long silence. It was then, for the first time, that I heard your real history. Up to that day I had always looked upon you as my cousin. I came here under an assumed name, and I accepted the secretaryship to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, simply that I might see you and be near you, myself unknown. To see you and be near you was to love you. I determined, if it were possible to do so, to win you in the character of a poor man. Whether I have succeeded or failed, you know best."
"All this seems very hard to believe," said Eleanor at last. "And yet, if you tell me it is true, I suppose it must be so." She sighed; and then, in a low tone of voice, as if speaking to herself, she said: "'Lord Ronald is heir of all my lands, and I am not the Lady Clare.'"
"Yes; but what says his lordship in conclusion? 'We two will wed the morrow morn, and you shall still be Lady Clare.'"
She gazed at him sadly, wonderingly.
"Don't forget your promise," he said. "With Heaven's help, this day month we will be man and wife!"
"Then you knew from the first that you were Gerald Warburton, the heir, and that I was--nobody?"
She seemed as if she wanted his further assurance before that fact would impress itself with sufficient clearness on her mind.
"I knew, dearest, what I have just told you. I heard it from Miss Bellamy before I first came down to Pembridge."
"You came to me as a poor man, and stole my heart away before I knew what had happened--stole it away, perhaps, for mere amusement. But now that you have thrown off your disguise, now that I know you for the caliph himself, the amusement is at an end, and you had better give me back a poor trifle for which you can now have no possible use."