'I won't be compelled!' she interrupted with vehemence. 'I am resolved not to be yours--not to give you an answer to-night! Never, never will I be reasoned out of my intention; and I say I won't answer you to-night! I should never have let you be so much with me but for pity of you; and now it is come to this!'
She had sunk into a chair, and now leaned upon her hand, and buried her face in her handkerchief. He had never caused her any such agitation as this before.
'You stab me with your words,' continued De Stancy. 'The experience I have had with you is without parallel, Paula. It seems like a distracting dream.'
'I won't be hurried by anybody!'
'That may mean anything,' he said, with a perplexed, passionate air. 'Well, mine is a fallen family, and we must abide caprices. Would to Heaven it were extinguished!'
'What was extinguished?' she murmured.
'The De Stancys. Here am I, a homeless wanderer, living on my pay; in the next room lies she, my sister, a poor little fragile feverish invalid with no social position--and hardly a friend. We two represent the De Stancy line; and I wish we were behind the iron door of our old vault at Sleeping-Green. It can be seen by looking at us and our circumstances that we cry for the earth and oblivion!'
'Captain De Stancy, it is not like that, I assure you,' sympathized Paula with damp eyelashes. 'I love Charlotte too dearly for you to talk like that, indeed. I don't want to marry you exactly: and yet I cannot bring myself to say I permanently reject you, because I remember you are Charlotte's brother, and do not wish to be the cause of any morbid feelings in you which would ruin your future prospects.'
'My dear life, what is it you doubt in me? Your earnestness not to do me harm makes it all the harder for me to think of never being more than a friend.'
'Well, I have not positively refused!' she exclaimed, in mixed tones of pity and distress. 'Let me think it over a little while. It is not generous to urge so strongly before I can collect my thoughts, and at this midnight time!'
'Darling, forgive it!--There, I'll say no more.'
He then offered to sit up in her place for the remainder of the night; but Paula declined, assuring him that she meant to stay only another half-hour, after which nobody would be necessary.
He had already crossed the landing to ascend to his room, when she stepped after him, and asked if he had received his telegram.