He did not answer for a moment. Then he rapped out, "Do you need a husband to protect you—against some danger?"
Marise shook her head. "It isn't so romantic as that. No one is persecuting me. I—cared a little for somebody. I thought maybe he and I might be married. But things have altered with him. He has to marry a very rich girl. I haven't got money enough, it seems—although he loves me."
"The damned brute!" burst from Garth. (He knew who the "brute" was, well enough.)
"Don't call him that," Marise pleaded. "I understand how things are with him. But——"
"I suppose people have coupled your names. Good God, I'm thankful you sent for me! No one shall ever say he jilted you. It shall be the other way round. When will you marry me, girl?"
It was a new and piercing thought to Marise that, if Severance went home immediately and married his cousin, people would suppose she had been jilted. She, so sensitive to every breeze which blew praise or blame, ought to have realised that this would be the case.
Strange that it needed a blundering fellow like John Garth to point out the peril. The girl saw at once that it was a real one. She shrank from the prospect as from a lash. She could hear the "cats" who had already been "horrid" in England, and the cats awaiting their chance to be horrid in New York, mewing with joy over this creamy dish of scandal.
"I told you how it would be! As soon as he got the title, and a little money with it, he threw her over!"
In a flash she saw a second motive for her marriage with Garth, if Severance were to marry Œnone Ionides. She must marry someone, and she hadn't the heart just now to pick and choose as, of course, she could do, given a little time. Prickling with shame over the explanation which she tried stumblingly to make, her impulse was to catch at the one Garth offered. Why not, since now that she thought of it, his point of view was hers? Pain would be saved for both. And she realised that she could not blurt out the naked truth in words. It seemed to her that, if she attempted to do so, this rude giant, this primitive man in New York "ready-mades," would kill her, as he had already suggested killing Severance.
"Then you consent?" she took him up.