“I hope it is not serious?” I said, feeling not a little bewildered by this late visit. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I had a cable from home,” he began, and I knew from his voice that he was nervous. “My father has had a paralytic seizure, and I’m off to England to-night. The general has been most awfully kind about it,” he paused for a moment, and then went on: “I need scarcely say that I could not leave the country without saying good-bye to you.”
I felt my face glowing, and murmured a civility that was I am afraid unintelligible.
“You remember,” he continued, “that morning at Moul Ali when I declared I would say something to you that I could never tell to another soul. Well, now I am here to say it. I have come to ask if you will be my wife.”
For a moment I felt almost stunned by this unexpected question, and then filled with a sense of exquisite tremulous joy.
“I have always been in love with you, as you may have guessed, and I’ve rushed up here in this abrupt unceremonious fashion to put my fate to the touch before I go home. What is my answer to be—Yes or No?”
“They say you will be a lord some day,” I remarked irrelevantly. “I—I would never do for a countess.”
“I entirely disagree with that; but don’t meet troubles half-way. My cousin is hale and hearty and only sixty-five; I may die before him. I’m afraid I’m rushing you, but I should like to know before I leave that you belonged to me; and yet probably I am a presumptuous idiot, and you may not care a straw about me. I know I’m not the only fellow that is in love with you, and I’ve heard you called the prettiest girl in India.”
I could not restrain a wild hysterical laugh as I exclaimed:
“You are nearly as bad as Mrs. Soames—she compared me to a fairy princess.”