‘I came because I promised.’

‘But you did not promise to speak;—­did you?’

‘What would you have me say?’

’Ah what!  Am I to be so weak as to tell you now what I would have you say?  Suppose you were to say, “I am a gentleman, and a man of my word, and I repent me of my intended perfidy,” do you not think you might get your release that way?  Might it not be possible that I should reply that as your heart was gone from me, your hand might go after it;—­that I scorned to be the wife of a man who did not want me?’ As she asked this she gradually raised her voice, and half lifted herself in her seat, stretching herself towards him...