‘What are you saying?’ he exclaimed, almost roughly. ‘What did you promise me? You said that nothing should change you, and I believed it!’ ‘Nothing has--nothing can--but, for all that, you must give me up. It is for my aunt’s sake, Gilbert. If you only saw her you would understand what I have gone through. It is no choice of mine. How can you think it is anything to me but despair?’ Speid’s heart sank, and the thing whose shadow had risen as he locked up the jewels and looked at his mother’s face on the wall loomed large again. He guessed the undercurrent of her words. ‘She has not forbidden me to marry you,’ continued Cecilia, ‘but she has told me it will break her heart if I do, and I believe it is true. What is the use of hiding anything from you? There is something in the background that I did not know; but if you imagine that it can make any difference to me, you are not the man I love, not the man I thought. You believe me? You understand?’ ‘I understand--I believe,’ he said, turning away his head. ‘Ah, my God!’ ‘But you do not doubt me--myself?’ she cried, her heart wrung with fear. He turned and looked at her. Reproach, suffering, pain unutterable were in his eyes; but there was absolute faith too. ‘But must it be, Cecilia? I am no passive boy to let my life slip between my fingers without an effort. Let me see Lady Eliza. Let me make her understand what she is doing in dividing you and me. I tell you I _will_ see her!’ ‘She will not forbid it, for she has told me to act for myself and leave her out of my thoughts; but she is broken-hearted. It is piteous to see her face. There is something more than I know at the root of this trouble--about you--and it concerns her. I have asked her, and though she admitted I was right, she forbade me to speak of it. You would have pitied her if you had seen her. I cannot make her suffer--I cannot, even for you.’ ‘And have you no pity for me?’ he broke out. The tears she had repressed all day rushed to her eyes. She sat down and hid her face. There was a silence as she drew out her handkerchief, pressing it against her wet eyelashes. ‘Think of what I owe her,’ she continued, forcing her voice into its natural tone--‘think what she has done for me! Everything in my life that has been good has come from her, and I am the only creature she has. How can I injure her? I thought that, at Whanland, we should hardly have been divided, but it seems that we could never meet if I were there. She has told me that.’ He struck the back of the chair by which he stood with his clenched fist. ‘And so it is all over, and I am to go?’ he cried. ‘I cannot, Cecilia--I will not accept it! I will not give you up! You may push me away now, but I will wait for ever, for you are mine, and I shall get you in the end!’ She smiled sadly.