“How do you mean, that he had need be?” asked she, eagerly.
“I mean this--that he will require every gift he has, and every grace, to outbalance the affection which I bear you--which I shall never cease to bear you. You prefer him. Now, you may regard me how you will--I will not consent to believe myself beaten. Yes, Florence, I know not only that I love you more than he does, but I love you with a love he is incapable of feeling. I do not wish to say one word in his dispraise, least of all to you, in whose favour I want to stand well; but I wish you--and it is no unfair request--to prove the affection of the two men who solicit your love.”
“You may be satisfied with the version your own imagination renders of it. You may be satisfied with the picture you have coloured for yourself; but I want you to be just to yourself, and just to me. Now if I can show you in his own handwriting--the ink only dried on the paper a day ago--a letter from him to me, in which he asks my pardon in terms so abject as never were wrung from any man, except under the pressure of a personal fear?”
“You say this to outrage me. Aunt Grainger,” cried she, in a voice almost a scream, “listen to what this gentleman has had the temerity to tell me. Repeat it now, Sir, if you dare.”
“What is this, Mr. Calvert? You have not surely presumed--”
“I have simply presumed, Madam, to place my pretensions in rivalry with Mr. Loyd’s. I have been offering to your niece the half of a very humble fortune, with a name not altogether ignoble.”
“Oh dear, Mr. Calvert!” cried the old lady, “I never suspected this. I’m sure my niece is aware of the great honour we all feel--at least I do most sensibly--that, if she was not already engaged--Are you ill, dearest? Oh, she has fainted. Leave us, Mr. Calvert Send Maria here. Milly, some water immediately.”
For more than an hour Calvert walked the little grass-plot before the door, and no tidings came to him from those within. To a momentary bustle and confusion, a calm succeeded--lights flitted here and there through the cottage. He fancied he heard something like sobbing, and then all was still and silent.
“Are you there, Mr. Calvert?” cried Milly, at last, as she moved out into the dark night air. “She is better now--much better. She seems inclined to sleep, and we have left her.”