But she escaped. “No, not that,” she said. “It must not be so, Mr. Owen;—it must not. It cannot be so.”
“Tell me one thing, Isabel, before we go any further, and tell me truly. Do you love me?”
She was standing about six feet from him, and she looked hard into his face, determined not to blush before his eyes for a moment. But she could hardly make up her mind as to what would be the fitting answer to his demand.
“I know,” said he, “that you are too proud to tell me a falsehood.”
“I will not tell you a falsehood.”
“Do you love me?” There was still a pause. “Do you love me as a woman should love the man she means to marry?”
“I do love you!”
“Then, in God’s name, why should we not kiss? You are my love and I am yours. Your father and mother are satisfied that it should be so. Seeing that we are so, is it a disgrace to kiss? Having won your heart, may I not have the delight of thinking that you would wish me to be near you?”
“You must know it all,” she said, “though it may be unwomanly to tell so much.”
“Know what?”
“There has never been a man whose touch has been pleasant to me;—but I could revel in yours. Kiss you? I could kiss your feet at this moment, and embrace your knees. Everything belonging to you is dear to me. The things you have touched have been made sacred to me. The Prayerbook tells the young wife that she should love her husband till death shall part them. I think my love will go further than that.”
“Isabel! Isabel!”
“Keep away from me! I will not even give you my hand to shake till you have promised to be of one mind with me. I will not become your wife.”
“You shall become my wife!”
“Never! Never! I have thought it out, and I know that I am right. Things have been hard with me.”
“Not to me! They will not have been hard to me when I shall have carried my point with you.”
“I was forced to appear before your eyes as the heiress of my uncle.”
“Has that made any difference with me?”
“And I was forced to refuse you in obedience to him who had adopted me.”
“I understand all that very completely.”
“Then he made a new will, and left me some money.”
“Of all that I know, I think, every particular.”
“But the money is not there.” At this he nodded his head as though smiling at her absurdity in going back over circumstances which were so well understood by both of them. “The money is offered to me by my cousin, but I will not take it.”
“As to that I have nothing to say. It is the one point on which, when we are married, I shall decline to give you any advice.”
“Mr. Owen,” and now she came close to him, but still ready to spring back should it be necessary, “Mr. Owen, I will tell you what I have told no one else.”
“Why me?”
“Because I trust you as I trust no one else.”
“Then tell me.”
“There is another will. There was another will rather, and he has destroyed it.”
“Why do you say that? You should not say that. You cannot know it.”
“And, therefore, I say it only to you, as I would to my own heart. The old man told me so—in his last moments. And then there is the look of the man. If you could have seen how his craven spirit cowered beneath my eyes!”
“One should not judge by such indications. One cannot but see them and notice them; but one should not judge.”
“You would have judged had you seen. You could not have helped judging. Nothing, however, can come of it, except this—that not for all the world would I take his money.”
“It may be right, Isabel, that all that should be discussed between you and me—right if you wish it. It will be my delight to think that there shall be no secret between us. But, believe me, dearest, it can have no reference to the question between us.”
“Not that I should be absolutely penniless?”
“Not in the least.”
“But it will, Mr. Owen. In that even my father agrees with me.” In this she was no doubt wrong. Her father had simply impressed upon her the necessity of taking the money because of her lover’s needs. “I will not be a burden at any rate to you; and as I cannot go to you without being a burden, I will not go at all. What does it matter whether there be a little more suffering or a little less? What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal to me.”
“A man gets over that quickly, I think.”
“So does a woman—if she be the proper sort of woman for getting over her difficulties of that kind. I don’t think you are.”
“I will try.”
“I won’t.” This he said, looking full into her face. “My philosophy teaches me to despise the grapes which hang too high, but to make the most of those which come within my reach. Now, I look upon you as being within my reach.”
“I am not within your reach.”
“Yes; pardon me for my confidence, but you are. You have confessed that you love me.”
“I do.”
“Then you will not be so wicked as to deny to me that which I have a right to demand? If you love me as a woman should love the man who is to become her husband, you
