But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me – my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool, – as a bewildered idiot.