He took her hand as he spoke, his voice trembled.
He looked up and saw that she was weeping.
In an instant his reserve, his determination to go no further was broken down.
He drew the hand to his lips and, looking up at her averted face, passionately said, in a voice trembling with love and supplication:
"Lady Boisdale--Ethel! you know for whom my heart has thirsted, you know why to me the world is bitter and life a mockery! It is because I love you--I love you, Ethel, and I have not dared to hope. If you can forgive me my presumption. If you can--if you can love me--oh, Ethel, you know I have loved so long and hopelessly. Forgive me if I have forgotten the gulf which yawns between us. Why should I not?" he exclaimed, suddenly and passionately. "Is it a crime to love a noble woman, because she is an earl's daughter? Hearts are not given to the rich and mighty alone. The peasant revels in the power to love, and I--I who kneel at your feet pleading for your pardon, feel that I have not sinned against Heaven or man, but have simply obeyed the pure impulse of my soul in daring to love you. Ethel, Ethel, you too condemn me!"
And with a tone of despair and reproach, he half rose.
"No! no!" cried Ethel, turning to him and laying her white, trembling hand upon his arm. "No, no. Condemn you! I love you!"
So Bertie had declared love, and won an acknowledgment from Ethel that his love was returned.
"Ethel," he said, and the name sounded wonderfully sweet as he dwelt upon it with loving tenderness, "Ethel, I must go to the earl and ask for my pearl of price. Shall I go to-morrow?"
"To-morrow?" she said. "Yes, must it be so soon?"
"Yes," he said, quietly and gravely, "the world will say that I should have asked him first; but we cannot always control our hearts, they will have their way sometimes, and mine has been under bolt and bar so long--so long."
"So long?" she murmured, blushing and turning away from him.
"Almost from the day when I first saw you--do you remember the time? Poor Leicester was alive then, and I poured all my hopes and fears into his ears. Ethel, I thought it hard that I should be debarred from hope; you were an earl's daughter--as you are now--and I was penniless, struggling, unknown."