Amy's bright colouring paled while Pearl was speaking. She rose from her seat, and stood with clasped hand and bent head.
"Pearl," she replied, with a break in her voice, "go on--go on scolding me. I feel I deserve every word you say, and you cannot blame me more than I blame myself. I can't think what induced me to behave as I did. But you alone know how sometimes a spirit of contradiction takes possession of me, and when he said, 'I have come back all these thousands of miles to ask you again to be my wife. You will have me this time, won't you, Amy?' I just answered--'And pray, Sir Ralph, why should I answer yes now more than eighteen months ago? The circumstances, I imagine, are just the same as far as I am concerned.'"
"You said that? Good heavens! what cruel creatures women are!" exclaimed Pearl. "And what was his answer?"
"I think he turned very white, and he said--'This, then, is your only answer after--after all this time?'"
"And what did you reply?"
"What did I reply? Oh, nothing."
"Nothing? Oh, Amy!"
"I couldn't, Pearl. But I did the next best thing. I went to the piano and played some bars of a waltz, that waltz of Strauss' to which he and I have danced so much in the old days. Of course, I thought that he would understand by that--that--well--that I didn't mean 'no' exactly. A woman would have understood the nuance in a second, but men are so dense. I put plenty of expression into my playing, too. But when I looked up he was gone!"
Pearl couldn't help laughing at this very original form of replying to an offer of marriage. She took the girl in her arms and kissed her.
"Really, Amy, you are a most extraordinary girl. What other person would think of doing such a thing? You really deserve that he should never come back again. A serious man like Sir Ralph is not to be coquetted with like a boy. He put you a question, a question on which depends the happiness of his life, and all you seem capable of doing is to reply in this flippant manner."