He had asked her many times before--sometimes
half jestingly, sometimes with a sudden imperious passion that would fain
have swept everything before it. But this was different. There was a
gravity, an earnestness in his speech which she could not lightly brush
aside. Alone here, under the wide sky, with only God's open spaces round
them, it seemed to her as though his question and her answer to it must
partake of the same solemnness as vows exchanged within the hallowed walls
of a sanctuary.
She wished intensely that she could give him the answer he desired. And,
beyond that, she felt the urge of Virginia's trust in her. Here was her
chance. At a word from her he was willing to renounce the one thing for
which he craved--the thing that had wrecked his father's life, and which
might some day wreck his own. Ought she to say that word--promise to marry
him, even though she had no love to give him? Her mind seemed to be going
round and round in a maze of uncertainty and doubt.
And then suddenly the remembrance of what Lady Susan had said rushed over
her: _"A woman may throw her whole life's happiness into the scales, and
still fail to turn the balance. Without love--the love that can forgive
seventy times seven, and then not be tired--she'll certainly fail_.
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