“Stay, Rosa!” he said, huskily, when she attempted to rise.  “Do not leave me yet.  I may not be altogether so unworthy, so basely callous as I have given you reason to suppose.  Can it be that I have misconstrued what you have said, or do you really care that our separation is so near?  I had not thought of this.”

“I understand.”  She lowered her flag of distress and confronted him sorrowfully, not in resentment.  “You believed me incapable of deep and lasting feeling; saw in me no more than the world does, a giddy coquette, feather-haired and shallow-hearted.  Be it so.  Perhaps it is best that you should not be undeceived.  Such injustice and prejudice are the penalties a woman must suffer who wears a tinsel cloak over her finer affections—­admits but few, sometimes but one, to her sanctum sanctorum.  The gushing, loving, extensively-loving class fare better.  You have been very kind and attentive to me in my strangerhood here, Mr. Chilton.  I must always revert to your conduct with gratitude.  By the way”—­a hysterical laugh breaking into her dignified acknowledgment of benefits received—­“that is the same, in substance, that you said to me a while ago, isn’t it?  So we are even—­owe each other nothing.”

“Except to love one another.”  The solemn accents hushed her reckless prattle.  “Rosa, can you learn this lesson?”

She had shrunk down—­sunk is not the word to convey an idea of the prostration of strength, the collapse of resolution, expressed by the figure cowering in the deep chair, its face upborne and hidden by the shaking hands.  They were cold as ice, Frederic felt, when he would have drawn them aside.

“We will have no foolish reserves, my child.  Much, if not all, the happiness of our future lives may depend upon our perfect sincerity now.  You do not require to be told how poor is the offering of my heart.  You are the only person who has ever entered into the secret of its emptiness and desolation; seen blight, where there should be bloom; ashes, where flame should glow.  But such as it is, it is yours, if you will have it.  If you are willing to trust yourself with me, I will cherish as I now honor you, truly and forever; leave no means untried that can add to your happiness.  Dare you make the venture?”

Her unstudied caress was beautiful and pathetic in its lowliness of humility and earnest affection—­too earnest for the commonplace outlet of words.  It was to slip to her knees at his feet, and kiss his hand, then lay her cheek upon it, as some dumb, devoted thing might do.

Then she was lifted into his arms, and kissed with a fervor she mistook for awakening passion, and her heart bounded more madly in the belief that her victory was complete, that he would henceforward be hers in feeling as in name.

Yet the words breathed into her ear as her head rested upon his bosom might have taught her the fallacy of her conviction and her hopes.

“My noble, faithful girl!  What have I to offer you in payment for all this?”