“I think I have,” he answered, “if her name was Higden.”
“Her name was Higden. Though she was so weak and old, she kept true to one purpose to the very last. Even at the very last, she made me promise that her purpose should be kept to, after she was dead, so settled was her determination. What she did, I can do. Mr. Wrayburn, if I believed—but I do not believe—that you could be so cruel to me as to drive me from place to place to wear me out, you should drive me to death and not do it.”
He looked full at her handsome face, and in his own handsome face there was a light of blended admiration, anger, and reproach, which she—who loved him so in secret whose heart had long been so full, and he the cause of its overflowing—drooped before. She tried hard to retain her firmness, but he saw it melting away under his eyes. In the moment of its dissolution, and of his first full knowledge of his influence upon her, she dropped, and he caught her on his arm.
“Lizzie! Rest so a moment. Answer what I ask you. If I had not been what you call removed from you and cut off from you, would you have made this appeal to me to leave you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Don’t ask me, Mr. Wrayburn. Let me go back.”
“I swear to you, Lizzie, you shall go directly. I swear to you, you shall go alone. I’ll not accompany you, I’ll not follow you, if you will reply.”
“How can I, Mr. Wrayburn? How can I tell you what I should have done, if you had not been what you are?”
“If I had not been what you make me out to be,” he struck in, skilfully changing the form of words, “would you still have hated me?”
“O Mr. Wrayburn,” she replied appealingly, and weeping, “you know me better than to think I do!”