It was an impulse you could not control. Had you, after
the impulse had passed, come down here, believing, as you might
well have believed, that it was absolutely impossible to rescue
me from my fate, it would have been different. But the moment you
came to yourself you deliberately took every risk and showed how
brave you were when master of yourself. I am speaking plainly,
perhaps more plainly than I ought to. But I should despise myself
had I not the courage to speak out now when so much is at stake,
and after all you have done for me.
"You love me?"
"You know that I love you."
"And I love you," the girl said; "more than that, I honor and esteem
you. I am proud of your love. I am jealous for your honor as for
my own, and I hold that honor to be spotless. Even now, even with
my happiness at stake, I could not speak so plainly had I not spoken
so cruelly and wrongly before. I did not know you then as I know
you now, but having said what I thought then, I am bound to say
what I think now, if only as a penance. Did I hesitate to do so,
I should be less grateful than that poor Indian girl who was ready
as she said, to give her life for the life you had saved."
"Had you spoken so bravely but two days since," Bathurst said,
taking her hand, "I would have said. 'I love you too well, Isobel,
to link your fate to that of a disgraced man.' but now I have it
in my power to retrieve myself, to wipe out the unhappy memory of
my first failure, and still more, to restore the self respect which
I have lost during the last month.
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