Yet she could not, she dared not yet say yes to his
demand.
"My lord," she said, "oh, you have stirred me! Yet I dare not reply to
you as you wish. Life is hard as it is, and you have suddenly made it
harder. What is more, I do not, I cannot, believe you. You have loved
many. Your life has been a covert menace. Oh, I know what they said of
you in Ireland. I know not of your life here. I suppose it is
circumspect now; but in Ireland it was declared you were notorious with
women."
"It is a lie," he answered. "I was not notorious. I was no better and
no worse than many another man. I played, I danced attendance, I said
soft nothings, but I was tied to no woman in all Ireland. I was
frolicsome and adventurous, but no more. There is no woman who can
say I used her ill or took from her what I did not--"
"Atone for, Lord Mallow?"
"Atone--no. What I did not give return for, was what I was going to
say."
The situation was intense. She was in a place from which there was no
escape except by flight or refusal. She did not really wish to refuse.
Somehow, there had come upon her the desire to put all thought of Dyck
Calhoun out of her mind by making it impossible for her to think of him;
and marriage was the one sure and complete way--marriage with this man,
was it possible? He held high position, he was her fellow countryman and
an Irish peer, and she was the daughter of an evil man, who was, above
all else, a traitor to his country, though Lord Mallow did not know that.
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