"In the mean time we should, I hope, go on much as we are going now; she is in Mrs. Harold's charge, you know."
The southerner thought that this also was spoken much too lightly. "Would your intention be to—to educate her further?" he asked, bringing out the question with an effort. It seemed to him that he never could consent to that, to have their child carried off, while still so young and impressible, and subjected to the radical modern processes that passed as education for girls at the high-pressure North.
"No," Winthrop answered, divining the Doctor's thought, and smiling over it, "I have no intentions of that kind, how could I have? If Garda should choose to study for a while, that would be her own affair, and Mrs. Harold's. She will be entirely free."
"Do you mean that you will exercise no authority?"
"None whatever."
"Then you do not consider it an engagement?" said the Doctor, drawing himself up belligerently.
"As much of an engagement as this: she has said that she would be my wife at the end of two years, if, at the end of two years, she should find herself in the same mind."
"For God's sake, sir, don't smile, don't take it in that way! At what are you laughing? It cannot be at Garda, it must be therefore at myself; I am not aware in what respect I am a subject for mirth." The Doctor was suffocating.
"You don't do me justice," said Winthrop, this time seriously enough. "I ask you, and with all formality, since you prefer formality, for your permission, as guardian, to make Edgarda Thorne my wife, if, at the end of two years, she should still be willing."
"And if she shouldn't be? She is a child, sir—a child."