“No, and I shall certainly not wear them in my next situation,” I replied.
“Your next situation?” he repeated.
“I think Mrs. Mason knows of one that will suit me.”
“If it comes to that—so do I.”
I stared at him in amazement. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he resumed, “Look here, I can’t talk to you here among this buzzing crowd” (we were now close to the landing-stage); “come out on the lake with me for ten minutes. Never mind Mrs. Hooper or Mrs. Grundy.”
When he had rowed some distance in dead silence, he suddenly rested on his oars and confronted me with a serious face.
“Miss Harlowe,” he said, “I’ve brought you out here, where you cannot escape, to ask you to marry me. Yes, no wonder you start—but listen. Ever since I first saw you, from the moment you sat down at table opposite to me looking so timid and white, I’ve been in love with you. My uncle knew all about it; he, too, experienced your charm, but he urged me to go slow—you were so young and so inexperienced. He improved your acquaintance in those long board-ship walks and talks, and made me furiously jealous; and as to that Bilton fellow, who started such running at first, I felt inclined to pick a quarrel and pitch him overboard. Perhaps you don’t know that I am ridiculously rich; I wish I wasn’t; it sounds a funny thing to say, but money is an immense responsibility, and Uncle Tom said I was bound to marry a girl who had a head on her shoulders, who could hold her own in society and be a help—and that you were a mere inexperienced child. However, he soon altered that opinion. He found you modest, accomplished, dignified and sensible. The next objection was far more serious. He declared that you did not care a brass button about me.”
It was not for me to enlighten him, and after a pause he gravely continued:
“You never seemed to mind which of us you talked to—indeed, of the two, you were far more confidential and friendly with the General, and never gave me any encouragement. However, I just ran up here to see you. I have had your face before me all the time I’ve been away shooting, and I seem to have arrived at what they call the psychological moment—when your affairs have come to a crisis; and the upshot of this long story is—will you marry me?”
Subsequently we spent an exciting quarter of an hour explaining, arguing, urging, and protesting, for somehow though I felt desperately agitated, and most unspeakably happy, I was frightened by his money and the responsibilities of my future ‘position.’ However, as might be supposed, it ended in my landing at the boat-house the fiancée of Alaric Sandars, and it was promptly arranged by my future lord and master that I was to go straight to the Osbornes as soon as I had put some things together, and there make my preparations for an immediate departure to England.