should, as I have sometimes thought, happen to care about anything so worthless, then, you see, the affair assumes a different aspect."
"I don't quite understand you. What do you mean?" she said, in a low voice.
"I mean that in that case I will ask you if you will take me for a husband."
"You do not love me, Ernest; I should weary you."
He felt for her hand, found it, and took it in his own. She made no resistance.
"Dear," he said, "it is this way: I can never give you that passion I gave to Eva, because, thank God, the human heart can know it but once in a life; but I can and will give you a husband's tenderest love. You are very dear to me, Doll, though it is not in the same way that Eva is dear. I have always loved you as a sister, and I think that I should make you a good husband. But, before you answer me, I want you to thoroughly understand about Eva. Whether I marry or not, I fear that I shall never be able to shake her out of my mind. At one time I thought that perhaps if I made love to other women I might be able to do so, on the principle that one nail drives out another. But it was a failure; for a month or two I got the better of my thoughts, then they would get the better of me again. Besides, to tell you the truth, I am not quite sure that I wish to do so. My trouble about this woman has become a part of myself. It is, as I told you, my 'evil destiny'; and goes where I go. And now, dear Doll, you will see why I asked you if you really cared for me, before I asked you to marry me. If you do not care for me, then it will clearly not be worth your while to marry me, for I am about as poor a catch as a man can well be; if you do--well, /then/ it is a matter for your consideration."
She paused awhile and answered:
"Suppose that the positions were reversed, Ernest; at least, suppose this: suppose that you had loved your Eva all your life, but she had not loved you except as a brother, having given her heart to some other man, who was, say, married to somebody else, or in some way separated from her. Well, supposing that this man died, and that one day Eva came to you and said, 'Ernest, my dear, I cannot love you as I loved him who has gone, and whom I one day hope to rejoin in heaven; but if you wish it, and it will make you the happier, I will be your true and tender wife.' What should you answer her, Ernest?"
"Answer? why, I suppose that I should take her at her word and be thankful. Yes, I think that I should take her at her word."
"And so, dear Ernest, do I take you at your word; for as it is with you about Eva, so it is with me about you. As a child I loved you; ever since I have been a woman I have loved you more and more, even through all those cold years of absence. And when you came back, ah, then it was to me as it would be to you if you suddenly once more saw the light of day. Ernest, my beloved, you are all my life to me, and I take you at your word, my dear. I will be your wife."
He stretched out his arms, found her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the lips.
"Doll, I don't deserve that you should love me so; it makes me feel ashamed that I have not everything to give you in return."
"Ernest, you will give me all you can; I mean to make you grow very fond of me. Perhaps too one day you will give me 'everything.'"
He hesitated a little while before he spoke again.
"Doll," he said, "you are sure quite that you do not mind about Eva?"
"My dear Ernest, I accept Eva as a fact, and make the best of her, just as I should if I wanted to marry a man with a monomania that he was Henry VIII."
"Doll, you know I call her my evil destiny. The fact is, I am afraid of her; she overpowers my reason. Well, now, Doll, what I am driving at is this: supposing--not that I think she will--that she were to crop up again, and take it into her head to try and make a fool of me! She /might/ succeed, Doll."
"Ernest, will you promise me something on your honour?"
"Yes, dear."
"Promise me that you will hide from me nothing that passes between Eva and yourself, if anything ever should pass, and that in this matter you will always consider me not in the light of a wife, but of a trusted friend."
"Why do you ask me to promise that?"
"Because then I shall, I hope, be able to keep you both out of trouble. You are not fit to look after yourselves, either of you."
"I promise. And now, Doll, there is one more thing. Notwithstanding what I said just now it is somehow fixed in my mind that my fate and that woman's are intertwined. I believe, perhaps foolishly enough, that what we are now passing through is but a single phase of interwoven existence; that we have already passed through possibly many stages and that many higher stages and developments await us. The question is, do you care to link your life with that of a man who holds such a belief?"
"Ernest, I daresay your belief is a true one, at any rate to you who believe it, for it seems probable that as we sow so shall we reap, as we spiritually imagine so shall we spiritually inherit, since causes must in time produce effects. These beliefs are not implanted in our hearts for nothing, and surely in the wide heavens there is room for the realisation of them all. But I too have my beliefs, and one of them is, that in God's great hereafter every loving and desiring soul will be with the soul thus loved and desired. For him or her, at any rate, the other will be there, forming a part of his or her life, though, perhaps, it may elsewhere and with others also be pursuing its own desires and satisfying its own aspirations. So you see, Ernest, your beliefs will not interfere with mine, nor shall I be afraid of losing you in another place.
"And now, Ernest, my heart's love, take my hand, and let me lead you home; take my hand as you have taken my heart, and never leave go of it again till at last I die."
So hand in hand they went home together, through the lights and shadows of the twilight.
CHAPTER VII
MAZOOKU'S FAREWELL
Dorothy and Ernest returned to Dum's Ness just in time to dress for dinner, for since Ernest and Jeremy had come back, Dorothy, whose will in that house was law, had instituted late dinner. The dinner passed over as usual, Dorothy sitting between Ernest and her grandfather, and attending to the wants of those two unfortunates, both of whom would have found it rather difficult to get through their meal without her gentle, unobtrusive help. But when dinner was over and the cloth removed, and Grice had placed the wine upon the table and withdrawn, an unusual thing happened.
Ernest asked Dorothy to fill his glass with port, and when she had done so he said:
"Uncle and Jeremy, I am going to ask you to drink a health."
The old man looked up sharply. "What is it, Ernest, my boy?"
As for Dorothy, she blushed a rosy red, guessing what was coming, and not knowing whether to be pleased or angry.
"It is this, uncle--it is the health of my future wife, Dorothy."
Then came a silence of astonishment. Mr. Cardus broke it:
"Years ago, Ernest, my dear nephew, I told you that I wished this to come to pass; but other things happened to thwart my plans, and I never expected to see it. Now in God's good time it has come, and I drink the health with all my heart. My children, I
