“It has been a dreadful shock to me,” she said. “If you knew, you would understand.”
After a little coaxing, she spoke, or rather blurted out:
“If you must know—he actually—asked me—to marry him!”
Nothing so very dreadful, I suppose; but, under the circumstances, rash, to say the least—for Lilia admitted that her father was in total ignorance.
“He would never look at Roderick again,” she assured me. “Don’t say ‘nonsense.’ I tell you he would not. I am never to marry!”
“Why not?” I asked, perversely.
She looked at me almost with indignation.
“Marriage means misery,” she said, oracularly.
“You mean, that Sir Roderick thinks it does,” I suggested.
“He knows it,” she said, with emphasis, below her breath.