"You are very sure that I shall come to love you, said she, shifting woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place on which at first she had taken her stand.
"Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church to-morrow?"
She trembled at his calm assurance. It was as if she almost feared that what he said might come to pass.
"Since you bear such faith in your heart," said she, "were it not nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first and wed me afterwards?"
"It is the course I should, myself, prefer," he answered quietly. "But it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost denied your house. What chance had I whilst I might not come near you, whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from constant repetition?"
"Do you say that these tales are groundless?" she asked, with a sudden lifting of the eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did not escape him.
"I would to God I could," he cried, "since from your manner I see that would improve me in your sight. But there is just sufficient truth in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them a full denial. Yet in what am I worse than my fellows? Are you of those who think a husband should come to them as one whose youth has been the youth of cloistered nun? Heaven knows, I am not one to draw parallels 'twixt myself and any other, yet you compel me. Whilst you deny me, you receive this fellow Blake--a London night-scourer, a broken gamester who has given his creditors leg-bail, and who woos you that with your fortune he may close the doors of the debtor's gaol that's open to receive him."
"This is unworthy in you," she exclaimed, her tone indignant--so indignant that he experienced his first pang of jealousy.
"It would be were I his rival," he answered quietly. "But I am not. I have saved you from becoming the prey of such as he by forcing you to marry me."
"That I may become the prey of such as you, instead," was her retort.
He looked at her a moment, smiling sadly. Then, with pardonable self-esteem when we think of what manner of man it was with whom he now compared himself, "Surely," said he, "it is better to become the prey of the lion than the jackal."
"To the victim it can matter little," she answered, and he saw the tears gathering in her eyes.