She told me even more--that I must try to make my own
life so perfect that the truest nobility of all, the nobility of virtue,
might be mine."
"Did she really tell you that?" asked Lord Arleigh wonderingly.
"Yes; and, Norman, she said that you would discuss the question with me
once, and once only--that would be on my wedding-day. On that day you
would ask for and I should tell the whole history of my father's crime;
and after that it was to be a dead-letter, never to be named between
us."
"And you believed her?" he said.
"Yes, as I believe you. Why should I have doubted her? My faith in her
was implicit. Why should I have even thought you would repent? More than
once I was on the point of running away. But she would not let me go.
She said that I must not be cruel to you--that you loved me so dearly
that to lose me would prove a death-blow. So I believed her, and,
against my will, staid on."
"I wish you had told me this," he said, slowly.
She raised her eyes to his.
"You would not let me speak, Norman. I tried so often, dear, but you
would not let me."
"I remember," he acknowledged; "but, oh, my darling, how little I knew
what you had to say! I never thought that anything stood between us
except your poverty.
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