"Do not be too sure of that, Dorothy," I replied. "It is a request your father ardently desires me to make, and I do not know how to speak to you concerning the subject in the way I wish."
I could not ask her to marry me, and tell her with the same breath that I did not want her for my wife. I felt I must wait for a further opportunity to say that I spoke only because her father had required me to do so, and that circumstances forced me to put the burden of refusal upon her. I well knew that she would refuse me, and then I intended to explain.
"Why, what is it all about?" asked the girl in surprise, suspecting, I believe, what was to follow.
"It is this: your father is anxious that his vast estates shall not pass out of the family name, and he wishes you to be my wife, so that your children may bear the loved name of Vernon."
I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to speak. She looked at me for an instant in surprise, turning to scorn. Then she spoke in tones of withering contempt.
"Tell my father that I shall never bear a child by the name of Vernon. I would rather go barren to my grave. Ah! that is why Sir John Manners is a villain? That is why a decisive step should be taken? That is why you come to my father's house a-fortune-hunting? After you have squandered your patrimony and have spent a dissolute youth in profligacy, after the women of the class you have known will have no more of you but choose younger men, you who are old enough to be my father come here and seek your fortune, as your father sought his, by marriage. I do not believe that my father wishes me to—to marry you. You have wheedled him into giving his consent when he was in his cups. But even if he wished it with all his heart, I would not marry you." Then she turned and walked rapidly toward the Hall.
Her fierce words angered me; for in the light of my real intentions her scorn was uncalled for, and her language was insulting beyond endurance. For a moment or two the hot blood rushed to my brain and rendered me incapable of intelligent thought. But as Dorothy walked from me I realized that something must be done at once to put myself right with her. When my fit of temper had cooled, and when I considered that the girl did not know my real intentions, I could not help acknowledging that in view of all that had just passed between us concerning Sir John Manners, and, in fact, in view of all that she had seen and could see, her anger was justifiable.
I called to her: "Dorothy, wait a moment. You have not heard all I have to say."
She hastened her pace. A few rapid strides brought me to her side. I was provoked, not at her words, for they were almost justifiable, but because she would not stop to hear me. I grasped her rudely by the arm and said:—
"Listen till I have finished."