behaviour. I am removed from you and your family by being a working girl. How true a gentleman to be as considerate of me as if I was removed by being a Queen!”
He would have been base indeed to have stood untouched by her appeal. His face expressed contrition and indecision as he asked:
“Have I injured you so much, Lizzie?”
“No, no. You may set me quite right. I don’t speak of the past, Mr. Wrayburn, but of the present and the future. Are we not here now, because through two days you have followed me so closely where there are so many eyes to see you, that I consented to this appointment as an escape?”
“Again, not very flattering to my self-love,” said Eugene, moodily; “but yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Then I beseech you, Mr. Wrayburn, I beg and pray you, leave this neighbourhood. If you do not, consider to what you will drive me.”
He did consider within himself for a moment or two, and then retorted, “Drive you? To what shall I drive you, Lizzie?”
“You will drive me away. I live here peacefully and respected, and I am well employed here. You will force me to quit this place as I quitted London, and—by following me again—will force me to quit the next place in which I may find refuge, as I quitted this.”
“Are you so determined, Lizzie—forgive the word I am going to use, for its literal truth—to fly from a lover?”
“I am so determined,” she answered resolutely, though trembling, “to fly from such a lover. There was a poor woman died here but a little while ago, scores of years older than I am, whom I found by chance, lying on the wet earth. You may have heard some account of her?”