‘Nora,’ he said, speaking perhaps with more energy than the words required, ’I have come here to tell you that I love you, and to ask you to be my wife.’

Nora, for the last ten minutes, had been thinking that this would come, that it would come at once; and yet she was not at all prepared with an answer.  It was now weeks since she had confessed to herself frankly that nothing else but this this one thing which was now happening, this one thing which had now happened, that nothing else could make her happy, or could touch her happiness.  She had refused a man whom she otherwise would have taken, because her heart had been given to Hugh Stanbury.  She had been bold enough to tell that other suitor that it was so, though she had not mentioned the rival’s name.  She had longed for some expression of love from this man when they had been at Nuncombe together, and had been fiercely angry with him because no such expression had come from him.  Day after day, since she had been with her aunt, she had told herself that she was a broken-hearted woman, because she had given away all that she had to give and had received nothing in return.  Had he said a word that might have given her hope, how happy could she have been in hoping.  Now he had come to her with a plain-spoken offer, telling her that he loved her, and asking her to be his wife, and she was altogether unable to answer.  How could she consent to be his wife, knowing as she did that there was no certainty of an income on which they could live?  How could she tell her father and mother that she had engaged herself to marry a man who might or might not make 400 pounds a year, and who already had a mother and sister depending on him?

In truth, had he come more gently to her, his chance of a happy answer of an answer which might be found to have in it something of happiness would have been greater.  He might have said a word which she could not but have answered softly and then from that constrained softness other gentleness would have followed, and so he would have won her in spite of her discretion.  She would have surrendered gradually, accepting on the score of her great love all the penalties of a long and precarious engagement.  But when she was asked to come and be his wife, now and at once, she felt that in spite of her love it was impossible that she should accede to a request so sudden, so violent, so monstrous.  He stood over her as though expecting an instant answer; and then, when she had sat dumb before him for a minute, he repeated his demand.  ’Tell me, Nora, can you love me?  If you knew how thoroughly I have loved you, you would at least feel something for me.’