"Henrietta, before you move one step further, you must answer me this question—are we in future to be friends or foes?"
"Not foes! Oh! certainly, not foes!" Henrietta stammered, taken quite aback by the suddenness of the question. "Oh! certainly, not foes!"
"Because I cannot endure this uncertainty much longer," he went on as if he had not heard her. "I must have an answer, and that soon. I might, indeed, insist upon your own letter, but I will not. It was written under a sudden impulse, and the word that gives you to me for a wife must be said with a calm consciousness of its import. What shall that word be, Henrietta—yes or no?"
"Yes, if you will have me," she said, in a low voice, half-turning away her head as she did so.
"If! So long and so faithfully as I have loved you, and do you still talk of if?" he answered, almost reproachfully.
"There is an 'if,' however," said Henrietta; "and when you have heard me out, you will have to decide the question for yourself."
"Nay, the only 'if' for me is the 'if' that you really love me," he replied wistfully, and in a way which showed he felt by no means certain upon that score.
"That is the very thing," she answered, flushing scarlet. "Harry, dear Harry, remember that I have never had a mother's care, and promise to be still my friend, even if what I have got to tell you should alter all your other wishes in my regard."
"What can you have to say that could do that?" he asked impatiently. "For God's sake, Henrietta, say it out at once, whatever it may be!"
"It is not so very easy, perhaps," she said in a low voice. And then she added quickly: "They call me a woman grown, Harry, and yet in some few things I think that I am still almost a child."