"Margery! Lady Margery!"
"Yes. Yes."
"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'
"Hush, hearts, hush. I will not go away."
VII
He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old fireplace. He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to marry him, she knew. And in the black and white of evening things, bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler on the wall. And he had more than they had, she felt—abounding energy. She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and stately a little.
He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South Africa, where he was going. And he was carefully telling her how wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.
"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."
"Oh, I don't know," she lied. "Ireland is a lot to me."
He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing—of a lucky chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very young man. She understood.