"No," I say absently; "for I always thought I should have to marry George."
"Don't say that," he says, frowning; "it sounds as though it did not matter much to you whether you married him or me; and I suppose if I had not come you would have married him?"
"I suppose so, sooner or later!"
"You are very cool over it," he says, giving me a little impatient shake; "I do believe that after a while you would have got a comfortable sort of a liking for him, and never found out that you were capable of feeling anything different."
"Of course I should! And when you came back to The Towers later on, we should have looked upon you as a sort of benevolent elderly gentleman, whom we should have prevailed on to intercede with the governor to obtain his consent to our marriage, and we should have become very fond of you."
"Would you, indeed?" he says. "Let me tell you, child, that if you had been betrothed wife or wedded wife when I came back, it would have been just the same, you would have loved me as I should have loved you—instinctively."
"Would you?" I ask slowly.
"Ay! that would I! And your heart would have come to me as mine would have gone to you, across everything."
"No, Paul, it would not. If I had belonged to George, and, too late, met and loved you, you should never have known it. You praised me once for being honest. . . ."
We are in a remote corner of the garden now, and we stand still with the dull, sodden ground at our feet, and the grey, blank skies overhead, and he takes me in his arms.
"Sweet and honest, fair and true!" he says; "was ever any one like my sweetheart? Thank God that no other man has a shadow of right over you, Nell; who is there, indeed, of all the living world, that could come between us and make our love a sin?"
