"
"Upon my word," said Middlemas, "she has been extremely candid indeed,
and I am very much obliged to her!"
"And upon _my_ honest word, Mr. Middlemas," returned Hartley, "you do
Miss Gray the greatest injustice--nay, you are ungrateful to her, if you
are displeased at her making this declaration. She loves you as a woman
loves the first object of her affection--she loves you better"--He
stopped, and Middlemas completed the sentence.
"Better than I deserve, perhaps?--Faith, it may well be so, and I love
her dearly in return. But after all, you know, the secret was mine as
well as hers, and it would have been better that she had consulted me
before making it public."
"Mr. Middlemas," said Hartley, earnestly, "if the least of this feeling,
on your part, arises from the apprehension that your secret is less safe
because it is in my keeping, I can assure you that such is my grateful
sense of Miss Gray's goodness, in communicating, to save me pain, an
affair of such delicacy to herself and you, that wild horses should tear
me limb from limb before they forced a word of it from my lips."
"Nay, nay, my dear friend," said Middlemas, with a frankness of manner
indicating a cordiality that had not existed between them for some time,
"you must allow me to be a little jealous in my turn. Your true lover
cannot have a title to the name, unless he be sometimes unreasonable;
and somehow, it seems odd she should have chosen for a confidant one
whom I have often thought a formidable rival; and yet I am so far from
being displeased, that I do not know that the dear sensible girl could
after all have made a better choice.
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