"Then I wish you would come to St. Johnswort with me!"

"Would that do?" she asked. "If Mrs. Rock--"

He saw how far she was from taking his meaning, but he pushed on. "I
don't want Mrs. Rock. I want you--you alone. Don't you understand me? I
love you. I--of course it's ridiculous! We've only met three or four
times in our lives, but I knew this as well the first moment as I do now.
I knew it when you came walking across the garden that morning, and I
haven't known it any better since, and I couldn't in a thousand years.
But of course--"

"Sit down," she said, wafting herself into a chair, and he obeyed her. "I
should have to tell my father," she began.

"Why, certainly," and he sprang to his feet again.

She commanded him to his chair with an imperative gesture. "I have got
to find out what I think, first, myself. If I were sure that I loved
you--but I don't know. I believe you are good. I believed that when they
were all joking you there at breakfast, and you took it so nicely; I have
_always_ believed that you were good."

She seemed to be appealing to him for confirmation, but he could not very
well say that she was right, and he kept silent. "I didn't like your
telling that story at the dinner, and I said so; and then I went and did
the same thing, or worse; so that I have nothing to say about that. And I
think you have behaved very nobly to Mr. St. John." As if at some sign of
protest in Hewson, she insisted, "Yes, I do! But all this doesn't prove
that I love you." Again she seemed to appeal to him, and this time he