“You can have a million cats, if you like, but all I want is you.  Just you, sweetheart, to love me, with all the love you can give me.  Will you come?”

“Oh,” cried Araminta, “if Aunt Hitty would only let me, but she never would!”

“We won’t ask her,” returned Ralph.  “We’ll go away to-night, and be married.”

At the word, Araminta started out of her chair.  Her face was white and her eyes wide with fear.  “I couldn’t,” she said, with difficulty.  “You shouldn’t ask me to do what you know is wrong.  Just because my mother was married, because she was wicked—­you must not think that I would be wicked, too.”

Hot words were struggling for utterance, but Ralph choked them back.  The fog was thick before him and he saw Araminta as through a heavy veil.  “Undine,” he said, moistening his parched lips, “some day you will find your soul.  And when you do, come to me.  I shall be waiting.”

He went out of the room unsteadily, and closed the door.  He stood at the head of the stairs for a long time before he went down.  Apparently there was no one in the house.  He went into the parlour and sat down, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, and trying to regain his self-control.

He saw, clearly, that Araminta was not in the least to blame; that almost ever since her birth, she had been under the thumb of a domineering woman who persistently inculcated her own warped ideas.  Since her earliest childhood, Araminta had been taught that marriage was wrong—­that her own mother was wicked, because she had been married.  And of the love between man and woman, the child knew absolutely nothing.

“Good God!” muttered Ralph.  “My little girl, oh, my little girl!” Man-like, he loved her more than ever because she had denied him; man-like, he wanted her now as he had never wanted her before.  Through the weeks that he had seen her every day, he had grown to feel his need of her, to hunger for the sweetness of her absolute dependence upon him.  Yet, until now, he had not guessed how deeply he cared, nor guessed that such caring was possible.

He sat there for the better part of an hour, slowly regaining command of himself.  Miss Evelina came through the hall and paused just outside the door, feeling intuitively that some one was in the house.  She drew down her veil and went in.

“I thought you had gone,” she said.  “Did you wish to see me?”

“No,” returned Ralph, wearily; “not especially.”

She sat down opposite him silently.  All her movements were quiet, for she had never been the noisy sort of woman.  There was something soothing in the veiled presence.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” ventured Ralph, at length.  “I’ll go, presently.  I’ve just had a—­well, a blow.  That little saint upstairs has been taught that marriage is wicked.”

“I know,” returned Miss Evelina, instantly comprehending.  “Mehitable has very strange ideas.  I’m sorry,” she added, in a tone she might have used in speaking to Anthony Dexter, years before.