“Do?” he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. “Give me up; let me go back to London, and think no more of me.”
“No, no; I cannot give you up! This hopelessness in our affairs makes me care more for you....I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen, why do we trouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there, shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed?”
“And Elfie,” said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, “Knight thinks nothing of my being only a cottager’s son; he says I am as worthy of his friendship as if I were a lord’s; and if I am worthy of his friendship, I am worthy of you, am I not, Elfride?”
“I not only have never loved anybody but you,” she said, instead of giving an answer, “but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such as you have for Knight. I wish you hadn’t. It diminishes me.”
“Now, Elfride, you know better,” he said wooingly. “And had you really never any sweetheart at all?”
“None that was ever recognized by me as such.”
“But did nobody ever love you?”
“Yes—a man did once; very much, he said.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, a long time.”