She remained silent. Glancing sideways at her, he wondered whether it was the moonlight that made her look so set and pale.
"But I said I would put a case before you,"--he continued, "and I will. Here are you,--of an age to be married. Here am I,--anxious to marry you. We are neither of us growing younger--and delay seems foolish. I offer you all I am worth in the world--myself, my name and my position. You have refused me a score of times, and I am not discouraged--you refuse me still, and I am not baffled. But I ask why? I am not deformed or idiotic. I would try to make you happy. A woman is best when she has entirely her own way,--I would let you have yours. You would be free to follow your own whims and caprices. Provided you gave me lawful heirs, I should ask no more of you. No reasonable man ought to ask more of any reasonable woman. Life could be made very enjoyable to us both, with a little tact and sense on either side. I should amuse myself in the world, and so I hope, would you. We understand modern life and appreciate its conveniences. The freedom of the matrimonial state is one of those conveniences, of which I am sure we should equally take advantage."
He puffed at his cigar for a few minutes complacently.
"You profess to hate me,"--he went on--"Again I ask, why? You tell your aunt that you want to be 'loved.' You consider love the only lasting good of life. Well, you have your desire. I love you!"
She raised her eyes,--and then suddenly laughed.
"You!" she said--"You 'love' me? It must be a very piecemeal sort of love, then, for I know at least five women to whom you have said the same thing!"
He was in nowise disconcerted.
"Only five!" he murmured lazily--"Why not ten--or twenty? The more the merrier! Women delight in bragging of conquests they have never made, as why should they not? Lying comes so naturally to them! But I do not profess to be a saint,--I daresay I have said 'I love you' to a hundred women in a certain fashion,--but not as I say it to you. When I say it to you, I mean it."
"Mean what?" she asked.
"Love."
She stopped in her walk and faced him.
"When a man loves a woman--really loves her,"--she said, "Does he persecute her? Does he compromise her in society? Does he try to scandalise her among her friends? Does he whisper her name away on a false rumour, and accuse her of running after him for his title, while all the time he knows it is he himself that is running after her money? Does he make her life a misery to her, and leave her no peace anywhere, not even in her own house? Does he spy upon her, and set others to do the same?--does he listen at doors and interrogate servants as to her movements--and does he altogether play the dastardly traitor to prove his 'love'?"