‘She will not trouble you again?’
‘Hardly so, I think. I have arranged for a friend of mine to see her on board ship to-morrow, and to pay her passage back to the port from which she sailed. I have an idea that I ought to thank Sir Frederick Pinkerton for the anonymous letter which served to unmask her.’ He drew his chair a little closer. ‘Laura! you have not forgotten yesterday morning?’ he said as he bent forward and tried to gaze into her eyes.
‘No; I have not forgotten.’ The reply was so low that he could scarcely hear it, and the eyes were kept persistently cast down.
‘You know how we were interrupted,’ went on Oscar. ‘A black cloud came between us, and we thought our happiness was wrecked for ever. But the cloud has vanished, and the sun shines out as brightly as before, and’——
‘Oscar, we must—both of us—try to think of yesterday morning as if it had never been.’
He drew himself upright in his chair with a great gasp; for a moment or two he was too stupefied to speak. ‘Try to think of yesterday morning as if it had never been! Impossible! But why try to do so?’
‘Because something has happened since then which makes it imperative that we should do so.’
‘Something happened! I don’t understand. I only know that you agreed to become my wife. What can have happened to alter that?’
‘You must not ask me, and I cannot tell you.’
‘And you ask me to agree to this without a word of explanation?’