“I hope,” he says in a dull way, “that you are not angry with him because he came first to me.  It was a sense of duty—­I know, I feel—­compelled him to do it, together with his honest diffidence about your affection for him.  Do not let pride stand in the way of——­”

“Nonsense!” says Perpetua, with a rapid movement of her hand.  “Pride has no part in it.  I do not care for Mr. Hardinge—­I shall not marry him.”

A little mist seems to gather before the professor’s eyes.  His glasses seem in the way, he drops them, and now stands gazing at her, as if disbelieving his senses.  In fact he does disbelieve in them.

“Are you sure?” persists he.  “Afterwards you may regret——­”

“Oh, no!” says she, shaking her head. "Mr. Hardinge will not be the one to cause me regret.”

“Still, think——­”

“Think!  Do you imagine I have not been thinking?” cries she, with sudden passion.  “Do you imagine I do not know why you plead his cause so eloquently?  You want to get rid of me.  You are tired of me.  You always thought me heartless, about my poor father even, and unloving, and—­hateful, and——­”

“Not heartless; what have I done, Perpetua, that you should say that?”

“Nothing.  That is what I detest about you.  If you said outright what you were thinking of me, I could bear it better.”

“But my thoughts of you.  They are——­” He pauses.  What are they?  What are his thoughts of her at all hours, all seasons?  “They are always kind,” says he, lamely, in a low tone, looking at the carpet.  That downward glance condemns him in her eyes—­to her it is but a token of his guilt towards her.

“They are not!" says she, with a little stamp of her foot that makes the professor jump.  “You think of me as a cruel, wicked, worldly girl, who would marry anyone to gain position.”

Here her fury dies away.  It is overcome by something stronger.  She trembles, pales, and finally bursts into a passion of tears that have no anger in them, only intense grief.

“I do not,” says the professor, who is trembling too, but whose utterance is firm.  “Whatever my thoughts are, your reading of them is entirely wrong.”

“Well, at all events you can’t deny one thing,” says she checking her sobs, and gazing at him again with undying enmity.  “You want to get rid of me, you are determined to marry me to some one, so as to get me out of your way.  But I shan’t marry to please you. I needn’t either.  There is somebody else who wants to marry me besides your—­your candidate!” with an indignant glance.  “I have had a letter from Sir Hastings this afternoon.  And,” rebelliously, “I haven’t answered it yet.”

“Then you shall answer it now,” says the professor.  “And you shall say ‘no’ to him.”

“Why?  Because you order me?”

“Partly because of that.  Partly because I trust to your own instincts to see the wisdom of so doing.”