In his glad surprise all else faded from his mind. “Am I dreaming?” he exclaimed. “Is it you, your very self? Marion, my darling, speak to me.” And he seemed as if he were about to seize her hand and draw her towards him. But she turned coldly; in an instant regaining her self-control, which in the first moments of amazement had deserted her. “Sir Ralph,” she said, “I cannot understand how it is you are here; but I do not want to see or speak to you. Go away, I beg of you, and do not ask me to answer you again.” But almost before she had finished the few cold, strange words, he interrupted her. “I don’t wonder you are indignant with me. Heaven only knows what I must have seemed to deserve you to think of me. But, listen to my explanation. You must, Marion, you shall!” he exclaimed, vehemently, as she was endeavouring to pass him. And mechanically she obeyed. She was not frightened, but the old influence was at work already. She could not resist his determination that he should be heard. She sank on the seat beside her, and he stood there in the doorway, the sunlight pouring in round him, while with earnest voice, and the quick-coming words of a full heart, he told his tale. Rapidly and unhesitatingly he went over all we have heard already. The reason of his former hesitation, the success of his journey to England, the bitter disappointment awaiting him on his return to Altes, the long string of mistakes and cross-purposes, up to the last extraordinary revelation contained in Cissy’s overlooked letter. She did not interrupt him by word or gesture. So he went on to tell of his delight, of the revulsion to joy from the depths of utter hopelessness the increased love and devotion wrought in him by the knowledge of all she had done and suffered; above all, by the explanation of her poor little innocent secret, which she, his poor darling, as he called her again, had dreaded his knowing. Then he stopped for a second time, but still she did not answer. “All is right now,” he said, while yet his heart throbbed faster, from some strange, unacknowledged misgiving—“all is right now,” he repeated. “My mother waiting eagerly to receive you as a daughter. Marion, my dearest, have I startled you? You look paler and thinner than you were. I am a brute not to have thought of it; you have been ill. Forgive my roughness, I implore you; but do not punish me in this dreadful way by refusing to look up or answer me. Speak to me, my darling, I beseech you.” Then at last she spoke, but in a dull, dead voice, and without raising her eyes from the sanded floor of the little summer-house, on which she was gazing, as if she would print it on her brain. She only said, without the slightest expression or inflection in her tone— “I thought you were married. I thought you were married to Florence Vyse.” He almost laughed in the momentary relief.