"I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?"
She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart-symptoms
like books of large type. "I fear you are sorry you came," said
Giles, "and that you think I should have advised you more firmly
than I did not to stay."
"Oh no, dear, dear friend," answered Grace, with a heaving bosom.
"Don't think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my
enforced treatment of you--dislodging you, excluding you from your
own house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for
you--what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never
feel for a man again! But as I have vowed myself to somebody else
than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave,
and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any divine law, after
what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay."
The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things
as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon,
an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic
views of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general.
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