“Not just for a moment,” he answered, looking straight at the mascot upon the bonnet of his car. “I want to talk and I’m a jolly bad hand at it, anyway.”
“You’re not so hopeless,” she assured him encouragingly. “You can go straight on. I’ll help you out when it’s necessary.”
She spoke lightly enough but already a queer little sense of excitement warned her to keep her face turned away from his. The things which he might say seemed incredible. She was passionately anxious and yet afraid to hear them.
“You see, Miss Claire,” he began, “I made a jolly bad start with you and that makes me extra careful. I never thought I was going to turn superstitious, but I can assure you of one thing—I haven’t trusted myself alone in Uncle Henry’s room with that Image since I got back.”
“I hope your Uncle Henry’s behaviour,” she began, with a faint smile——
“Oh, don’t chaff,” he interrupted. “I think it would take the devil himself to persuade Uncle Henry to step out of the narrow paths. This is what I wanted to say—Claire.”
He paused again, unrebuked. His eyes looked up the avenue towards the house. His slim fingers played nervously with the steering wheel.
“We’re in for a big family smash, we Ballastons,” he confided. “What little there is left when it comes will have to go, of course, to the governor and to Uncle Henry. For me there won’t be anything. I’m not complaining. I’m young enough still. I have wonderful health and, although I’m an ass at all the things that money’s made out of, I can ride, I understand farming and horses and all that sort of thing. I have made up my mind what to do. I am going out to Canada.”
“Canada!” she murmured under her breath.
“Yes. I know some fellows there who are doing quite decently. I shall be able to get just the sort of start I want. Now of course,” he went on, “under the circumstances, I ought not to say what I’m going to say to you, but I am going to say it all the same. I asked you to marry me once, Claire. It wasn’t any good, of course. You had only seen the rotten side of me then, but you understood. To-day I can’t ask you to marry me, but I want to tell you that I have all that feeling which a man should have when he asks such a thing, and ten thousand times more than most men have.”