"Why, I'd thank you a thousand times!" I cried. "I'd—I'd never forget you as long as I live."
"There's not much in that for me. I hate being thanked for things. And what good would it do me to be remembered by you at a distance, perhaps married to some beast or other?"
"But if I marry I sha'n't marry a beast," I sweetly assured my forty-fourth cousin four times removed.
"I should think any man you married a beast, if he wasn't me," said Jim.
"Good heavens!" I breathed. "Surely you don't want to marry me!"
"Surely I do," he retorted. "And what's more, you know it jolly well."
"I don't."
"You do. You've known it ever since that affair of the yacht. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have asked me to hide the Scarlett kid. I knew then that you knew. And you'd be a fool if you hadn't known—which you're not."
I said no more, because—I was found out! I had known. Only, I hadn't let myself think about it much—until lately perhaps. But now and then I had thought. I'd thought quite a good deal.
When he had me silenced, Jim went on: