The Gaspards of Pine Croft by Ralph Connor

Having watched his friends out of sight he turned back into the house, took down his gun and belt of cartridges and sauntered up the hill. But his mind was not on his sport. Adelina's fateful words were echoing like a tolling bell through his heart, "Too late! too late! " He tried to explain to himself that sense of shock that the words had given him. He had been trying for the past nine months to analyse his feeling for Peg. Love? That was hardly possible. Seven years ago, when as boy and girl together they had ridden the country over, there was no thought of love in his mind. All that sort of thing he would have despised as a silly, sissy affair. He could remember that he had assumed a sort of responsibility for Peg in those days; it was his business to take care of her, she was so delicate a thing, so needing care. It was that sense of responsibility for her that had wrought in him such fury at Asa on the day when Peg and Tubby had their ignominious tumble into the pool. But love for Peg? He could not quite analyse the sense of desolation, of outrage, that had swept his soul when Adelina had announced to him nine months ago that another had intervened and had assumed the right to care for her. Peg engaged to be married? That she had really given to another than himself the right always to protect her, to care for her, to defend, to fight if need be for her? It seemed to him that no man should step in and claim that right. He would like to see the man who would dare do this. Was this love?

He had been devouring under Dalton's guiding during the few spare hours that had been his these last months the works of some of the masters of English fiction. He had read of love and of lovers, their ecstasies, their passions, their despairs. Certainly no emotion of like quality had fallen upon him. Would Peg expect that of him, if he should by any chance he able to oust the other man from her heart? Could he give her that kind of love? He knew he could not. Why then should he disturb her? Why not go his way till she was married and safely in another man's care? Ah, that was it! Could any man care for her, give her that tender, unceasing, protective care that he knew he could give, that he longed to give, and that somehow he could not persuade himself that Peg would desire any other man to give? Was that love?