The Argosy — page 363: what you’re looking at

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340 The White Witch. window and stand at it, that the fresh air might cool her throbbing temples. But the window was already open. The bright moonlight streamed in, lighting up the green-carpeted floor and a few of the paintings that hung here and there upon the walls. And not until Mary was quite close to the window did she perceive that someone was lean- ing against the frame. It was Godfrey. CHAPTER XIV. IN THE MOONLIT GALLERY. GODFREY was himself in a mental tumult. Godfrey had throbbing temples also. And Godfrey had gone to the gallery window for the fresh air and the indulgence of thought just as Mary had been going, He wanted to have his doubts set at rest. Set at rest in some way. His sober reason refused to believe that she, that delicate girl, could have been mixed up in the affair of young William Hunt’s death ; he felt sure that, if it were so, it must have been innocently and un- wittingly. But he must know. He did not know what he should say to her; all he knew was that he must speak to her as soon as might be, that the force of his passionate entreaties must prevail with her to trust him. He would not tell her he loved her; he could not while he was en- gaged to Elspeth, he had sense enough to remember that: and, in good truth, he should never tell her, unless his doubts were solved. If she guessed it, why he could not help that; but he would use all the inducements a brother might use, with a thousand times a brother’s fervour ;.and surely she, so sensitive, passionate, impulsive under all the cold armour of reserve she could put on when she chose, would recognise the true ring in his sympathy and let her heart go out to meet it, and trust him fully with the past. Why, if he could meet her in the corridor, even then, on her way to her chamber, he would speak without further delay. A great deal of this was simple folly. But it was born of a resolu- tion so earnest, so devoted, that it might carry its object by force. To waylay a young lady at night ina moonlit corridor, and force her by the mere power of passionate persuasion to confess to him a secret which she had closely guarded from everyone until that moment, would have seemed, even to Godfrey, a wildly impossible enterprise viewed by the light of reason, or even thought over in broad day- light. But his love, his doubts, Sir William’s words, and perhaps the heat of the little wine he had taken, were all casting their glamour over him, :.nd robbing him in a degree of his sober calmness. All he felt was that her secret, whatever it might be, he must share with Eomichbooks.co m