He stooped and raised her up, and set her on the bench again, laying her head upon his shoulder, and supporting her form with his arm around her waist.
She made no resistance, but continued to weep convulsively.
As soon as he was able to command himself he spoke to her in a quiet tone.
"Odalite, why do you cry so hard? If you are going to marry this man to please yourself you should be happy, in spite of anything that I should say about it. Now, why do you grieve so much?"
"Oh! I have been so faithless to you, Le! I have been--so base to you! Oh! I wish I were dead! I wish I had died before I betrayed your trust in me, Le!"
These words came in spasmodic gasps and sighs from the white and quivering lips.
He looked at her searchingly, incisively; he could not understand her.
"Odalite," he said, suddenly, "I am full of doubt. I ask you again, and I charge you in the name of all that is pure and holy, to answer me truly: Was it of your own free will that you engaged yourself to Col. Anglesea?"
"Yes, yes! I repeat it: No one forced me, no one persuaded me. My father and my mother let me do just as I pleased," she sobbed.
"And yet, though you say this, you seem so miserable over it all! I cannot comprehend it!" muttered Leonidas Force, carrying his hand to his forehead and trying to reflect on the situation. "But--yes--I think I do now," he said, suddenly, as a light seemed to break on his mind.
Odalite raised her pale and tearful face from his shoulder and looked at him.
"I think I understand now, my dear; and it shall all come right yet."
"Oh, yes; it shall come right. Confess now, Odalite. When your boy lover had been gone away so long that you had almost forgotten him, this foreign officer comes along and fascinates you with his splendor, as the rattlesnake fascinates the humming bird, and you were drawn in. Now, however, that I have come back, the old-time love has revived, and you are sorry that you mistook your heart and engaged yourself to this brilliant stranger. Is it not so? Tell me, Odalite. If it is so--as I feel sure it must be--then I will put in my prior claim and stop the marriage, send the interloping foreigner back to his own country, and you and I will marry and go to housekeeping at Greenbushes, according to our lifelong engagement. That is, if the old love has revived, as of course it has," he concluded, looking eagerly in her face.