She followed him in passive obedience.  She took the one chair, he the other.

“Perhaps I am only a boy,” he said, “but I have knocked about a good deal, and I have kept my eyes as wide open as most folks.  I suppose ill-natured people might say that as I had nothing to do at Eglosilyan, I wanted to have a flirtation with the only girl who was handy.  I know better.  Year after year I saw more and more of you, bit by bit, and that after I had been abroad or living in other places in England from time to time.  I got to believe that I had never seen anywhere any girl or woman who was so honest as you are, and good in a dozen secret ways that needed a deal of discovering.  I found out far more about you than you imagined.  I heard of you in cottages that you never knew I was in; and everything I heard made me respect you more and more.  Mind this, too.  I had no sort of personal liking for the sort of thing you were doing.  I don’t admire beastly little rooms and poverty and sick people as appealing to a fine sentiment.  There never was anything of the parson or the benevolent old lady about me.  I would rather give half a crown to an impertinent little boy who had just whopped another boy bigger than himself than give a halfpenny tract to a sickly child in its mother’s arms:  that’s original sin in me, I suppose.  But all that squalid sort of work you were in only made the jewel shine the more.  I used to think I should like to marry a very grand woman, who could be presented at court without a tremor, who would come into a drawing-room as if she was conferring a favor on the world at large; and I certainly never thought I should find the best and finest woman I had ever seen in back kitchens sewing pinafores for children.  And then when I found her there, wasn’t it natural I should put some store by her friendship?  I suppose you didn’t know what I thought of you, Wenna, because I kept chaffing you and Mabyn?  I have told you something of it now; and now I want you to say whether you have a right to shunt me off like this, without a word of explanation.”

She sat still, silent and nervous.  The rude and impetuous eloquence of his speech, broken by many a hesitating stammer, had touched her.  There was more thoughtfulness and tenderness in this wild lad than she had supposed.

“How can I explain?” she burst out suddenly.  “I should cover myself with shame!”

“And what have you to be ashamed of?” he said with a stare.  The distress she was obviously suffering was so great that he had almost a mind to take her at her word and leave the house without further ado.

Just at this moment, when he was considering what would be the most generous thing to do, she seemed to nerve herself to speak to him, and in a low and measured voice she said, “Yes, I will tell you.  I have had a letter this morning from Mr. Roscorla.  He asks me if it is true that you are paying me such attention that people notice it; and he asks me if that is how I keep my promise to him.”