"Ah!" says Beauclerk. And then with increasing tenderness. "So glad they were removed; it would have been too much for you, wouldn't it?"
"Yes—I dare say—on the whole, I believe I don't mind them," says Miss Kavanagh. "Well—and what about last night? It was delightful, wasn't it?" Secretly she sighs heavily, as she makes this most untruthful assertion.
"Ah! Was it?" asks he. "I did not find it so. How could I when you were so unkind to me?"
"I! Oh, no. Oh, surely not!" says she anxiously. There is no touch of the coquetry that might be about this answer had it been given to a man better liked. A slow soft color has crept into her cheeks, born of the knowledge that she had got out of several dances with him. But he, seeing it, gives it another, a more flattering meaning to his own self love.
"Can you deny it?" asks he, changing his seat so as to get nearer to her. "Joyce!" He leans toward her. "May I speak at last? Last night I was foiled in my purpose. It is difficult to say all that is in one's heart at a public affair of that kind, but now—now——"
Miss Kavanagh has sprung to her feet.
"No! Don't, don't!" she says earnestly. "I tell you—I beg you—I warn you——" She pauses, as if not knowing what else to say, and raises her pretty hands as if to enforce her words.
"Shy, delightfully shy!" says Beauclerk to himself. He goes quickly up to her with all the noble air of the conqueror, and seizing one of her trembling hands holds it in his own.
"Hear me!" he says with an amused toleration for her girlish mauvaise honte. "It is only such a little thing I have to say to you, but yet it means a great deal to me—and to you, I hope. I love you, Joyce. I have come here to-day to ask you to be my wife."
"I told you not to speak," says she. She has grown very white now. "I warned you! It is no use—no use, indeed."