"If you are going to stay, I'll just fetch my work," rising as she spoke.
"No, Marjorie, don't go. There's something I specially wished to say, to talk to you about," he said, becoming a little confused under her unconscious gaze. Could he, after all, disturb this serenity by the suggestion of love and marriage? He felt somehow that the time was not ripe—that they would seem incongruous to her in connection with himself. And yet, if he did not speak, and be quick about it, another man might step in.
"I have had a letter to-day," he said, "offering me a college living."
"Have you?" said Marjorie in a not altogether flattering manner, and looking at him rather as though she were much surprised. She stood poised, ready to fetch the threatened work; her attitude altogether an unflattering one to a lover who has just made an important communication.
"You won't go, shall you?" she went on, her glance going past him to the wall which divided the gardens. Over the top big clusters of the roses in which Mr. Warde delighted nodded gaily, whilst further on the square face of his house was gay with bloom, amid which the two lines of windows stared a little baldly. The blind in each was arranged symmetrically, and in spite of its prim tidiness, even its outside showed that no loved woman ruled within. From her neighbour's house Marjorie's eyes jumped to her own home.
Here there was no symmetry, but its character as a home stood out plain. The nursery windows, distinguished by their guarding bars, were wide open, and the blinds drawn to the top, whilst in the three open windows of her mother's room adjoining the curtains flopped lazily, and the blinds had been adjusted to the sun. Somehow the sight and the difference brought a feeling into Marjorie's heart which had not yet stirred it in connection with Mr. Warde. Hitherto he had not seemed to her to need pity. But now, when he went back into his house—away from her and the homely garden, where vegetables, and currant bushes, and the untidy quarter of the boys, were of more account than flowers, where little feet pattered, and boys' voices were never silent—what would he go back to? The blank windows lit up empty rooms, where no foot but his own stirred. He would find no companionship but that of his music and his books. Marjorie never guessed of the visions that peopled his fireside.
"Shall you go?" she asked, looking at him—then speaking out suddenly the pity her thoughts had called up: "Won't it be very lonely?"
"Very. Sit down please, Marjorie, and listen to me."
Then, as she complied: "When first I came here, ten years ago, your father and mother were very kind to me, and I grew so attached to them and theirs, that I wanted nothing more. I felt no need of the ties other men have or make, because I had—you." Then his tone grew tender. "Do you remember how you used to come round and climb into my study window for your lessons, when the boys began to go to school? You were a bit forsaken then, Marjorie. And then, when you were good—as you weren't always—how a little pony accompanied me on my rides, and then when the pony and the child who rode it had each grown bigger, one day they both disappeared. The child went to school, to come back, nearly grown up, with music oozing out of her fingers' ends. Well, Marjorie" (he had risen, and his face was paling, his self-control vanishing, as he stood looking down on her), "I have waited a long time for that little girl—who has yet seemed always mine—I want her for my wife. Will you go with me, dear, if I go?"
Marjorie gazed blankly into his face. "I? Of course, it is me," she said slowly. "I don't know—I didn't think—how can I leave—everybody?" her voice faltered.