 cannot
marry: I love no one. And you say you do not know what love is - avowing in the
same breath that you did love me! Am I the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune,
name, are yours, at your feet: you kick them hence. I am here - you reject me.
But why, for what mortal reason am I here other than my faith in your love? You
drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge.«
    »You know it is not that, Sir Willoughby.«
    »Have you any possible suspicion that I am still entangled, not, as I assure
you I am, perfectly free in fact and in honour?«
    »It is not that.«
    »Name it; for you see your power. Would you have me kneel to you, madam?«
    »Oh! no; it would complete my grief.«
    »You feel grief? Then you believe in my affection, and you hurl it away. I
have no doubt that as a poetess, you would say, love is eternal. And you have
loved me. And you tell me you love me no more. You are not very logical, Lætitia
Dale.«
    »Poetesses rarely are: if I am one, which I little pretend to be for writing
silly verses. I have passed out of that delusion, with the rest.«
    »You shall not wrong those dear old days, Lætitia. I see them now; when I
rode by your cottage and you were at your window, pen in hand, your hair
straying over your forehead. Romantic, yes; not foolish. Why were you foolish in
thinking of me? Some day I will commission an artist to paint me that portrait
of you from my description. And I remember when we first whispered ... I
remember your trembling. You have forgotten - I remember. I remember our meeting
in the park on the path to church. I remember the heavenly morning of my return
from my travels, and the same Lætitia meeting me, stedfast and unchangeable.
Could I ever forget? Those are ineradicable scenes; pictures of my youth,
interwound with me. I may say, that as I recede from them, I dwell on them the
more. Tell me, Lætitia, was there not a certain prophecy of your father's
concerning us two? I fancy I heard of one. There was one.«
    »He was an invalid. Elderly people nurse illusions.«
    »Ask yourself, Lætitia, who is the
