I released her hand. I fixed my eyes keenly upon hers.
“Julia, you have your instructions what to say. You are sent here for this. They have set you in waiting to meet me here, and speak things which you do not understand, and assert things which I know you can not believe.”
“Edward, I believe YOU!” she exclaimed with emphasis, but with downcast eyes; “but it does not matter whether I was sent here, or sought you of my own free will. They tell me other things—there is more—but I have not the heart to say it, and it needs not much.”
“If you believe me, Julia, it certainly does not need that you should repeat to me what is said of me by enemies, equally unjust to me, and hostile to themselves. Yet I can readily conjecture some things which they have told you. Did they not tell you that your hand had been proffered me, and that I had refused it?”
She hung her head in silence.
“You do not answer.”
“Spare me; ask me not.”
“Nay, tell me, Julia, that I may see how far you hold me worthy of your love, your confidence. Speak to me—have they not told you some such story?”
“Something of this; but I did not heed it, Edward.”
“Julia—nay!—did you not?”