Doris could not speak. She endeavoured to do so, but in vain. It did not seem to her to be right to say what she wanted to tell him, and yet she could not utter the words that duty demanded. Therefore she remained silent.
"I have given her a chance to speak of her engagement to Sinclair, and she has not availed herself of it; therefore I will not believe she is engaged to him," said Bernard to himself; and then one of his hands stole under Doris’s fur cloak and clasped hers warmly, as he cried in low yet earnest tones, "My darling, I have brought good news. I have had a legacy left me in part payment of my lost money."
Doris uttered a cry of joy. "My father!" she exclaimed. "You have heard from him! He has sent you money! Oh, thank God! Where is father? Tell me quickly! And did he mention mother?" She spoke rapidly, in intense eagerness.
Bernard was grieved to disappoint her; still, the truth had to be told, so he said quickly, "The money was not from your father. Mr. Hamilton, his co-trustee, has died and left me five thousand pounds in his will, he said, as some compensation for my lost money. Immediately I knew it I came to claim you, my dearest!" He drew the shrinking girl a little nearer. "I always said," he continued--"I always said that you and no other woman in the world should be my wife."
"I cannot! Oh, I cannot!" The words were only just audible, but reached Bernard’s ears at length.
"Cannot!" He looked at her with pained surprise. Being very sanguine and also very young, he had already, in the last few minutes, almost forgotten the unwelcome news of her having become engaged to Norman Sinclair, which he had heard in London, and which had hurried him to Hastings. "Cannot!" he repeated. "But you must, and you shall! I have been too poor and too ill to claim you for some time. Now, however, that that money has come to me, I have immediately hastened here, in order to claim the fulfilment of your promise made to me upon the hill at Askern Spa. Don’t trifle with me, Doris," he added, with a little choke in his manly voice. "I have been through so very much that I cannot bear it."
"I have, too," she faltered. "God knows what I have been through."
"But that is ended," he said, quickly. "Thank God, that is all ended, and I have come now to _claim your promise_?