Her voice failed her.

Faversham’s lips tightened.  They remained looking at each other.  Then Faversham rose suddenly.  He stooped over her.  She heard his voice, hoarse and broken in her ears: 

“Lydia—­I love you!—­I love you—­with all my heart!—­and all my strength!  Don’t, for God’s sake, let us make believe with each other!  And—­I believe,” he added, after a moment, in a lower tone, “I believe—­that you love me!”

His attitude, his manner were masterful—­violent.  She trembled under it.  He tried to take her hand.

“Speak to me!” he said, peremptorily.  “Oh, my darling—­speak to me!  I only ask you to trust to me—­to be guided by me—­”

She withdrew her hand.  He could see her heart fluttering under the soft curves of the breast.

“I can’t—­I can’t!”

The words were said with anguish.  She covered her face with her hands.

“Because I won’t do what you wish?  What is it you wish?”

They had come to the deciding moment.

She looked up, recovering self-control, her heart rushing to her lips.

“Give it up!” she said, stretching out her hands to him, her head thrown back, all her delicate beauty one prayer.  “Don’t touch this money!  It is stained—­it is corrupt.  You lose your honour in taking it—­and honour—­is life.  What does money matter?  The great things that make one happy have nothing to do with money.  They can be had for so little!  And if one loses them—­honour and self-respect—­and a clear conscience—­how can money make up!  If I were to marry you—­and we had to live on Mr. Melrose’s money—­everything in life would be poisoned for me.  I should always see the faces—­of those dead people—­whom I loved.  I should hear their voices—­accusing.  We should be in slavery—­slavery to a bad man—­and our souls would die—­”

Her voice dropped—­drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.

Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug.  A vision rose and spread through the mind.  In place of the little sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set in order.  Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art, destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has written on time.  Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms.  He had watched their enthusiasm and their ardour.  And mingled with such experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that everything in that marvellous house was potentially his—­Claude Faversham’s, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to appreciate.