know you
love me. Whatever the feeling was that overcame you as to that other
man,--it has gone. I cannot now stop to be tender and soft in my
words. The thing to be said is too serious to me. And every friend
you have wants you to marry the man you love and to put an end to the
desolation which you have brought on yourself. There is not one among
us all, Fletchers and Whartons, whose comfort does not more or less
depend on your sacrificing the luxury of your own woe."

"Luxury!"

"Yes; luxury. No man ever had a right to say more positively to a
woman that it was her duty to marry him, than I have to you. And I
do say it. I say it on behalf of all of us, that it is your duty. I
won't talk of my own love now, because you know it. You cannot doubt
it. I won't even talk of yours, because I am sure of it. But I say
that it is your duty to give up drowning us all in tears, burying us
in desolation. You are one of us, and should do as all of us wish
you. If, indeed, you could not love me it would be different. There!
I have said what I've got to say. You are crying, and I will not take
your answer now. I will come to you again to-morrow, and then you
shall answer me. But, remember when you do so that the happiness of
many people depends on what you say." Then he left her very suddenly
and hurried back to the house by himself.

He had been very rough with her,--had not once attempted to touch her
hand or even her arm, had spoken no soft word to her, speaking of
his own love as a thing too certain to need further words; and he
had declared himself to be so assured of her love that there was no
favour for him now to ask, nothing for which he was bound to pray as
a lover. All that was past. He had simply declared it to be her duty
to marry him, and had told her so with much sternness. He had walked
fast, compelling her to accompany him, had frowned at her, and had
more than once stamped his foot upon the ground. During the whole
interview she had been so near to weeping that she could hardly
speak. Once or twice she had almost thought him to be cruel;--but he
had forced her to acknowledge to herself that all that he had said
was true and unanswerable. Had he pressed her for an answer at the
moment she would not have known in what words to couch a refusal. And
yet as she made her way alone back to the house she assured herself
that she would have refused.

He had given her four-and-twenty hours, and at the end of that time