“Say, why have you asked this of me?”
I do not know what Turner would have replied, for, obeying the impulse of the moment, I came forward, and before either of them were aware of my approach, stood in the room.
“Tell her the whole, dear Mr. Turner,” I said, going up to Maria with a degree of reverence I had never felt for her before. “She ought to know it—she must know that you are asking her to marry you that Lady Catherine may not turn us all adrift on the world; that the people may stop pointing at me because I have no father.”
Maria flung her arms around me.
“There—there!” exclaimed Turner, moving toward the door, “you see I’ve done my best, Zana, and have got everybody crying. Tell her yourself, child; just arrange it between you; call for me when all’s ready; what I say I stand to.”
The old man writhed himself out of the room, leaving Maria and I together.
My good, bonne was greatly agitated, and besought me to explain the scene I had interrupted, but I could not well understand it myself. All I knew was, that this marriage had been demanded by Lady Catherine as a condition of our remaining in the house. I repeated, word for word, what I had gathered of the conversation between her and Turner, omitting only those expressions of reluctance that had escaped my benefactor. She listened attentively, but being almost a child, like myself, in English custom, could not comprehend why this necessity had arisen for any change in our condition.
“And do you hate Mr. Turner so much?” I said, breaking a fit of thoughtfulness into which she had fallen. “I thought you liked each other till now; don’t, oh, my bonne, don’t marry him if it troubles you so! You and I can get a living somehow without taking him from his place.”
“Yes—two children—why, Zana, you know more of the world than I do. Where could we go?”
“I don’t know, without Mr. Turner, what we should do,” I answered, sadly.