“You have seen me five times.”
“And every time I met you I have liked you better than the last. It began that day at the Stores. I am not a bit susceptible. I never felt drawn to any one in such a way. I have met heaps and heaps of girls, nice ones too and pretty, and gone away and forgotten them in half a day; but you I never forgot. Your memory, your face, came all the way with me out to South America, came back with me; and when I saw you sweeping down the stairs at the Moate that night, I said to myself, ‘Here she comes—my fate!’ My poor old governor has made an awful muddle of our affairs, and we are dreadfully hard up; but I can take one of the farms, and work it myself.” He paused suddenly, and looked at me expectantly.
“Mr. Somers,” I began, “you have—I have—” Then in a sudden burst the words came—“What you ask is impossible.”
“Why?” he questioned softly.
“There is Miss Chalgrove,” I replied, still more softly.
“Oh, that old story!” with a shrug. “It would be an ideal match from the parents’ point of view, to combine the title and property with the money; but we have to be considered. Thank God, we are not crowned heads, who must only consult the welfare of the State. In the first place, my cousin Dolly does not care a straw about me. I am her cousin, comrade, and old friend. She would not marry me for anything. She says she knows me too well; it would be extremely uninteresting and monotonous! Then, I would not marry her; she is a very good fellow, but too much of a handful for any man. She has been riding a brute of a horse in the teeth of every one of her relations, male and female, and I heard to-day that he has given her rather a nasty fall, and she says it’s nothing; but she is so plucky, she always makes light of everything that happens to herself. Well, you see, Miss Chalgrove is no obstacle.”
“No, but there is Lady Hildegarde. If I were to marry you, I should only add to her troubles, and possibly she to mine. You cannot say that your mother would approve of your engagement to a girl you have only met five times, and who is both penniless and friendless?”
He made no immediate answer to this difficult question, and I added—