"Yes, you did. You told me as I was to come up to London when I saw you at Sheepstone Beeches;—didn't you? And you told me you loved me;—didn't you? And that if I wanted anything you'd get it done for me;—didn't you?"
"So I will. What do you want? I can give you a couple of sovereigns, if that's what it is."
"No it isn't;—and I won't have your money. I'd sooner work my fingers off. I want you to say whether you mean to marry me. There!"
As to the additional lie which Sir Felix might now have told, that would have been nothing to him. He was going to New York, and would be out of the way of any trouble; and he thought that lies of that kind to young women never went for anything. Young women, he thought, didn't believe them, but liked to be able to believe afterwards that they had been deceived. It wasn't the lie that stuck in his throat, but the fact that he was a baronet. It was in his estimation "confounded impudence" on the part of Ruby Ruggles to ask to be his wife. He did not care for the lie, but he did not like to seem to lower himself by telling such a lie as that at her dictation. "Marry, Ruby! No, I don't ever mean to marry. It's the greatest bore out. I know a trick worth two of that."
She stopped in the street and looked at him. This was a state of things of which she had never dreamed. She could imagine that a man should wish to put it off, but that he should have the face to declare to his young woman that he never meant to marry at all, was a thing that she could not understand. What business had such a man to go after any young woman? "And what do you mean that I'm to do, Sir Felix?" she said.
"Just go easy, and not make yourself a bother."
"Not make myself a bother! Oh, but I will; I will. I'm to be carrying on with you, and nothing to come of it; but for you to tell me that you don't mean to marry, never at all! Never?"
"Don't you see lots of old bachelors about, Ruby?"
"Of course I does. There's the Squire. But he don't come asking girls to keep him company."
"That's more than you know, Ruby."