“I—I—ah! no, Lord Bracondale,” she cried. “This is all very unwise. You would soon regret.”
“Regret!” he echoed. “No, I shall never regret, because, Jean, I love you!”
“Have you ever thought that, while you are a peer and a Cabinet Minister, I am only a nurse?”
“Social status should not be considered when a man loves a woman as truly and devotedly as I love you. Remember, to you I owe my recovery,” he said frankly. “In the weeks you have spent at my side I have realised that life will now be a blank when you have left my roof. But must it be so? Will you not take pity upon me and try to reciprocate, in even a small degree, the great love I bear you? Do, Jean, I beg of you.”
She was silent for a long time, her eyes fixed across the terrace upon the pretty Italian garden, to the belt of high, dark firs beyond.
“You ask me this, Lord Bracondale, and yet you do not even know my surname!” she remarked at last.
“Whatever your surname may be, it makes no difference to me,” was his reply. “Whatever skeleton may be hidden in your cupboard is no affair of mine. I ask nothing regarding your past life. To me, you are honest and pure. I know that, or you would not lead the life you now lead. I only know, Jean, that I love you,” and, again taking her soft hand tenderly, he once more raised it to his lips and imprinted upon it tender kisses.
His words showed her that his affection was genuine. His promise not to seek to unveil her past gave her courage, for she had all along been suspicious that he was endeavouring to learn her secret. What would he say, how would he treat her, if he ever knew the ghastly truth?
“Now, I wish to assure you,” he went on, “that I have no desire whatever that you should tell me the slightest thing which you may wish to regard as your own secret. All of us, more or less, possess some family confidence which we have no desire to be paraded before our friends. A wife should, of course, have no secrets from her husband after marriage. But her secrets before she becomes a wife are her own, and her husband has no right to inquire into them. I speak to you, Jean, as a man of the world, as a man who has sympathy for women, and who is cognisant of a woman’s feelings.”
“Do you really mean what you say, Lord Bracondale?” she asked, raising her serious eyes inquiringly to his.