Love Finds No Smooth Water in the Sea of Law

"Julia, you have your instructions what to say. You are sent here
for this. They have set you in waiting to meet me here, and speak
things which you do not understand, and assert things which I know
you can not believe."

"Edward, I believe YOU!" she exclaimed with emphasis, but with
downcast eyes; "but it does not matter whether I was sent here, or
sought you of my own free will. They tell me other things--there
is more--but I have not the heart to say it, and it needs not much."

"If you believe me, Julia, it certainly does not need that you
should repeat to me what is said of me by enemies, equally unjust
to me, and hostile to themselves. Yet I can readily conjecture some
things which they have told you. Did they not tell you that your
hand had been proffered me, and that I had refused it?"

She hung her head in silence.

"You do not answer."

"Spare me; ask me not."

"Nay, tell me, Julia, that I may see how far you hold me worthy
of your love, your confidence. Speak to me--have they not told you
some such story?"

"Something of this; but I did not heed it, Edward."

"Julia--nay!--did you not?"

"And if I did, Edward--"

"It surely was not to believe it?"

"No! no! no! I had no fears of you--have none, dear Edward! I knew
that it was not, could not be true."

"Julia, it was true!"

"Ah!"

"True, indeed! There was more truth in THAT than in any other part
of the story. Nay, more--had they told you all the truth, dearest
Julia, that part, strange as it may appear, would have given you
less pain than pleasure."