“Heaven forgive her if she misled him all this while; but she did not.  It were worse than death to think she did—­to know I’ve told you this in vain—­have offered you my heart only to have it thrust back upon me as something you do not want.  Speak, Alice! in mercy, speak!  Can it be that I’m mistaken?”

Alice saw how she had unwittingly led him on, and her white lips quivered with pain.  Lifting up her head at last, she exclaimed: 

“You don’t mean me, Hugh!  Oh, you don’t mean me?”

“Yes, darling,” and he clasped in his own the hand raised imploringly toward him.  “Yes, darling, I mean you.  Will you be my wife?”

Alice had never before heard a voice so earnest, so full of meaning, as the one now pleading with her to be what she could not be.  She must do something, and sliding from her stool she sank upon her knees—­her proper attitude—­upon her knees before Hugh, whom she had wronged so terribly, and burying her face in Hugh’s own hands, she sobbed: 

“Oh, Hugh, Hugh! you don’t know what you ask.  I love you dearly, but only as my brother—­believe me, Hugh, only as a brother.  I wanted one so much—­one of my own, I mean; but God denied that wish, and gave me you instead.  I’m sorry I ever came here, but I cannot go away.  I’ve learned to love my Kentucky home.  Let me stay just the same.  Let me really be what I thought I was, your sister.  You will not send me away?”

She looked up at him now, but quickly turned away, for the expression of his white, haggard face was more than she could bear, and she knew there was a pang, keener even than any she had felt, a pang which must be terrible, to crush a strong man as Hugh was crushed.

“Forgive me, Hugh,” she said, as he did not speak, but sat gazing at her in a kind of stunned bewilderment.  “You would not have me for your wife, if I did not love you?”

“Never, Alice, never!” he answered.  “But it is not any easier to bear.  I don’t know why I asked you, why I dared hope that you could think of me.  I might have known you could not.  Nobody does.  I cannot win their love.  I don’t know how.”

Alice neither looked up nor moved, only sobbed piteously, and this more than aught else helped Hugh to choke down his own sorrow for the sake of comforting her.  The sight of her distress moved him greatly, for he knew it was grief that she had so cruelly misled him.

“Alice, darling,” he said again, this time as a mother would soothe her child.  “Alice, darling, it hurts me more to see you thus than your refusal did.  I am not wholly selfish in my love.  I’d rather you should be happy than to be happy myself.  I would not for the world take to my bosom an unwilling wife.  I should be jealous even of my own caresses, jealous lest the very act disgusted her more and more.  You did not mean to deceive me.  It was I that deceived myself.  I forgive you fully, and ask you to forget that to-night has ever been.  It cut me sorely at first, Alice, to hear you tell me so, but I shall get over it; the wound will heal.”