"
"May she not give it in the future," he asked, "if the one object
of her husband's life is to deserve it?"
"Never!" she answered. "If you still persist in maintaining our
engagement, I may be your true and faithful wife, Sir Percival--
your loving wife, if I know my own heart, never!"
She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words
that no man alive could have steeled his heart against her. I
tried hard to feel that Sir Percival was to blame, and to say so,
but my womanhood would pity him, in spite of myself.
"I gratefully accept your faith and truth," he said. "The least
that you can offer is more to me than the utmost that I could hope
for from any other woman in the world."
Her left hand still held mine, but her right hand hung listlessly
at her side. He raised it gently to his lips--touched it with
them, rather than kissed it--bowed to me--and then, with perfect
delicacy and discretion, silently quitted the room.
She neither moved nor said a word when he was gone--she sat by me,
cold and still, with her eyes fixed on the ground. I saw it was
hopeless and useless to speak, and I only put my arm round her,
and held her to me in silence. We remained together so for what
seemed a long and weary time--so long and so weary, that I grew
uneasy and spoke to her softly, in the hope of producing a change.
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