“I have all along been expecting to marry you. I have not been trifling,” I cried out.
He stepped forward, and took my hand. It was as cold as ice.
“What is it then, Constance, that has changed you? Have I done anything since your illness to make you think less of me?”
I trembled from head to foot, and my lips were so stiff and dry that they scarce would do my bidding. I must have spoken very indistinctly.
“No—no,” I said slowly; “I will tell you everything—I have done you a wrong, an unintentional wrong, but I will do penance—I have seen myself to-night—” I paused here; Mr. Gregory was a practical man; had I told him that a vision had changed my attitude, he would have thought me insane. I myself had begun to entertain doubts as to my sanity. “I know myself now,” I faltered, “I know my heart—I love another man.”
Mr. Gregory rose, and began pacing the floor.
“This surprises me greatly,” he said at length; “there must have been another courtship—it would seem that you must have known something of how matters were tending.”
“I have known nothing until to-night. There has been no courtship, in the ordinary acceptation of that word—I’ll tell you all, even if it humbles me completely, as a penalty for what I have done to you. The man I love—” I could feel the blood mantling my face and neck, “has never addressed me.”
“It is—I know it is—it is most of all so to me, for it is wholly unlike what I have been all my life.”
“Let us not talk of this any more to-night, Miss Leigh,” he said, with evident relief; “I have been wrong to press this matter now, when you are hardly recovered. You are not yourself. This is something transitory, no doubt. Later on, you may feel differently.”
“No, no!” I exclaimed eagerly, “now that we have begun, let us say it all. Don’t—I beg of you, don’t go away with a feeling that I don’t know my mind. I am weak and miserable to-night—” here the tears choked my voice, and I all but broke down, “but I am miserable because I have learned my true feeling, and know that I must disappoint——”
I could not go on, and again he sat down beside me and took my hand.
“I cannot understand you,” he said simply.
“I can’t understand myself,” I replied; “but all this is none the less real for that. I have learned of it to-night, but it has existed before; it explains many things in the past year.”