"Everything, and I know YOU, which is better. Call it an investment if you like--for I know you will succeed--and let me share your profits.
Call it--if you please--rest.i.tution, for I am the miserable cause of your rupture with that man. Or call it revenge if you like," she said with a faint smile, "and let me fight at your side against our common enemy! Please, Mr. Rushbrook, don"t deny me this. I have come three thousand miles for it; I could have sent it to you--or written--but I feared you would not understand it. You are smiling--you will take it?"
"I cannot," said Rushbrook, gravely.
"Then you force me to go into the Stock Market myself, and fight for you, and, unaided by YOUR genius, perhaps lose it without benefiting you."
Rushbrook did not reply.
"At least, then, tell me why you "cannot.""
Rushbrook rose, and looking into her face, said quietly with his old directness:--
"Because I love you, Miss Nevil."
A sudden instinct to rise and move away, a greater one to remain and hear him speak again, and a still greater one to keep back the blood that she felt was returning all too quickly to her cheek after the first shock, kept her silent. But she dropped her eyes.
"I loved you ever since I first saw you at Los Osos," he went on quickly; "I said to myself even then, that if there was a woman that would fill my life, and make me what she wished me to be, it was you. I even fancied that day that you understood me better than any woman, or even any man, that I had ever met before. I loved you through all that miserable business with that man, even when my failure to make you happy with another brought me no nearer to you. I have loved you always. I shall love you always. I love you more for this foolish kindness that brings YOU beneath my roof once more, and gives me a chance to speak my heart to you, if only once and for the last time, than all the fortune that you could put at my disposal. But I could not accept what you would offer me from any woman who was not my wife--and I could not marry any woman that did not love me. I am perhaps past the age when I could inspire a young girl"s affection; but I have not reached the age when I would accept anything less." He stopped abruptly. Grace did not look up. There was a tear glistening upon her long eyelashes, albeit a faint smile played upon her lips.
"Do you call this business, Mr. Rushbrook?" she said softly.
"Business?"
"To a.s.sume a proposal declined before it has been offered."
"Grace--my darling--tell me--is it possible?"
It was too late for her to rise now, as his hands held both hers, and his handsome mouth was smiling level with her own. So it really seemed to a dispa.s.sionate spectator that it WAS possible, and before she had left the room, it even appeared to be the most probable thing in the world.
The union of Grace Nevil and Robert Rushbrook was recorded by local history as the crown to his victory over the Ring. But only he and his wife knew that it was the cause.