"That you—you—should be Miss Million's maid. Good heavens! It's unthinkable!"
"I suppose you mean," I said rather maliciously, "that you couldn't think of that sister of yours doing anything of the kind."
He didn't seem to hear me. He said quite violently: "You must give it up. You must give it up at once."
I laughed a little. I said: "Give up a good, well-paid and amusing situation? Why? And what could I do instead? Go back to my aunt, I suppose——"
"No," broke in the young bank manager, still quite violently, "come to me, couldn't you?"
I was so utterly taken aback that I hadn't a word to reply. I thought I must have misunderstood what he said.
There was a moment of jolting silence.
Then, in a tone of voice that seemed as if it had been jerked out of him, sentence by sentence, with the rolling of the 'bus, Mr. Brace went on:
"Miss Lovelace! I don't know whether you knew it, but—I have always—if you only knew the enormous admiration, the reverence, that I have always had for you—I ought not to have said it so soon, I suppose. I meant not to have said it for some time yet. But if you could possibly—there is nothing that I would not do to try to make you happy, if you would consent to become my wife."
"Oh, good heavens!" I exclaimed, absolutely dazed.