But,« said Harold, after a slight pause, and in a voice that was weighted
with new feeling, »it involves a difference in my position with regard to you;
and it is on this point that I wished to speak to you at once. When a man sees
what ought to be done, he had better do it forthwith. He can't answer for
himself to-morrow.«
    While Esther continued to look at him, with eyes widened by anxious
expectation, Harold turned a little, leaned on the mantelpiece, and ceased to
look at her as he spoke.
    »My feelings drag me another way. I need not tell you that your regard has
become very important to me - that if our mutual position had been different -
that, in short, you must have seen - if it had not seemed to be a matter of
worldly interest, I should have told you plainly already that I loved you, and
that my happiness could be complete only if you would consent to marry me.«
    Esther felt her heart beginning to beat painfully. Harold's voice and words
moved her so much that her own task seemed more difficult than she had before
imagined. It seemed as if the silence, unbroken by anything but the clicking of
the fire, had been long, before Harold turned round towards her again and said -
    »But to-day I have heard something that affects my own position. I cannot
tell you what it is. There is no need. It is not any culpability of my own. But
I have not just the same unsullied name and fame in the eyes of the world around
us, as I believed that I had when I allowed myself to entertain that wish about
you. You are very young, entering on a fresh life with bright prospects - you
are worthy of everything that is best. I may be too vain in thinking it was at
all necessary; but I take this precaution against myself. I shut myself out from
the chance of trying, after to-day, to induce you to accept anything which
others may regard as specked and stained by any obloquy, however slight.«
    Esther was keenly touched. With a paradoxical longing, such as often happens
to us, she wished at that moment that she could have loved this man with her
whole heart. The tears came into her eyes; she did not speak, but, with an
angel's tenderness in her face, she laid her hand on his sleeve. Harold
commanded himself strongly, and said -
    »What is to be done now is,
