'But you wrong me--Oh, so grievously!" she cried. 'I did not
meditate any such thing: believe me, Harry, I did not. It only
happened so--quite of itself.'
'Well, I suppose you didn't INTEND such a thing,' he said.
'Nobody ever does,' he sadly continued.
'And him in the grave I never once loved.'
'I suppose the second lover and you, as you sat there, vowed to be
faithful to each other for ever?'
Elfride only replied by quick heavy breaths, showing she was on
the brink of a sob.
'You don't choose to be anything but reserved, then?' he said
imperatively.
'Of course we did,' she responded.
'"Of course!" You seem to treat the subject very lightly?'
'It is past, and is nothing to us now.'
'Elfride, it is a nothing which, though it may make a careless man
laugh, cannot but make a genuine one grieve. It is a very gnawing
pain. Tell me straight through--all of it.'
'Never. O Harry! how can you expect it when so little of it makes
you so harsh with me?'
'Now, Elfride, listen to this. You know that what you have told
only jars the subtler fancies in one, after all. The feeling I
have about it would be called, and is, mere sentimentality; and I
don't want you to suppose that an ordinary previous engagement of
a straightforward kind would make any practical difference in my
love, or my wish to make you my wife. But you seem to have more
to tell, and that's where the wrong is.
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