“You want no counsellor, Mr. Grey.”
“No man ever wanted one more. Alice, this has been a bad year to me, and I do not think that it has been a happy one for you.”
“Indeed, no.”
“Let us forget it—or rather, let us treat it as though it were forgotten. Twelve months ago you were mine. You were, at any rate, so much mine that I had a right to boast of my possession among my friends.”
“It was a poor boast.”
“They did not seem to think so. I had but one or two to whom I could speak of you, but they told me that I was going to be a happy man. As to myself, I was sure that I was to be so. No man was ever better contented with his bargain than I was with mine. Let us go back to it, and the last twelve months shall be as though they had never been.”
“That cannot be, Mr. Grey. If it could, I should be worse even than I am.”
“Why cannot it be?”
“Because I cannot forgive myself what I have done, and because you ought not to forgive me.”
“But I do. There has never been an hour with me in which there has been an offence of yours rankling in my bosom unforgiven. I think you have been foolish, misguided—led away by a vain ambition, and that in the difficulty to which these things brought you, you endeavoured to constrain yourself to do an act, which, when it came near to you—when the doing of it had to be more closely considered, you found to be contrary to your nature.” Now, as he spoke thus, she turned her eyes upon him, and looked at him, wondering that he should have had power to read her heart so accurately. “I never believed that you would marry your cousin. When I was told of it, I knew that trouble had blinded you for awhile. You had driven yourself to revolt against me, and upon that your heart misgave you, and you said to yourself that it did not matter then how you might throw away all your sweetness. You see that I speak of your old love for me with the frank conceit of a happy lover.”
“No;—no, no!” she ejaculated.
“But the storm passes over the tree and does not tear it up by the roots or spoil it of all its symmetry. When we hear the winds blowing, and see how the poor thing is shaken, we think that its days are numbered and its destruction at hand. Alice, when the winds were shaking you, and you were torn and buffeted, I never thought so. There may be some who will forgive you slowly. Your own self-forgiveness will be slow. But I, who have known you better than anyone—yes, better than anyone—I have forgiven you everything, have forgiven you instantly. Come to me, Alice, and comfort me. Come to me, for I want you sorely.” She sat quite still, looking at the lake and the mountain beyond, but she said nothing. What could she say to him? “My need of you is much greater now,” he went on to say, “than when I first asked you to share the world with me. Then I could have borne to lose you, as I had never boasted to myself that you were my own—had never pictured to myself the life that might be mine if you were always to be with me. But since that day I have had no other hope—no other hope but this for which I plead now. Am I to plead in vain?”
“You do not know me,” she said; “how vile I have been! You do not think what it is—for a woman to have promised herself to one man while she loved another.”
“But it was me you loved. Ah! Alice, I can forgive that. Do I not tell you that I did forgive it the moment that I heard it? Do you not hear me say that I never for a moment thought that you would marry him? Alice, you should scold me for my vanity, for I have believed all through that you loved me, and me only. Come to me, dear, and tell me that it is so, and the past shall be only as a dream.”
“I am dreaming it always,” said Alice.
“They will cease to be bitter dreams if your head be upon my shoulder. You will cease to reproach yourself when you know that you have made me happy.”
“I shall never cease to reproach myself. I have done that which no woman can do and honour herself afterwards. I have been—a jilt.”
“The noblest jilt that ever yet halted between two minds! There has been no touch of selfishness in your fickleness. I think I could be hard enough upon a woman who had left me for greater wealth, for a higher rank—who had left me even that she might be gay and merry. It has not been so with you.”
“Yes, it has. I thought you were too firm in your own will, and—”
“And you think so still. Is that it?”
“It does not matter what I think now. I am a fallen creature, and have no longer a right to such thoughts. It will be better for us both that you should leave me—and forget me. There are things which, if a woman does them, should never be forgotten;—which she should never permit herself to forget.”
“And am I to be punished, then, because of your fault? Is that your sense of justice?” He got up, and standing before her, looked down upon her. “Alice, if you will tell me that you do not love me, I will believe you, and will trouble you no more. I know that you will say nothing to me that is false. Through it all you have spoken no word of falsehood. If you
