He was extremely unlike himself. His voice trembled, and in the dying light his face was gray. These things made his words impressive, but the girl did not seem particularly impressed. Had she remembered the one previous occasion when a similar conversation had taken place between them, the strangeness of his manner must have been driven home to her by contrast; but the contrast was a double one, and her own share in it kept her from thinking of the time when she had been serious and he had not, and now, when he was more serious than she had ever known him, she met him with a frivolous laugh.
"Well, really, Erskine, I've never heard you so terribly in earnest before! I think I had better not tell Ruth what you have said; my dear man, you speak as though you'd been there!"
It was some time before he laughed.
"If only you yourself would be more in earnest, Tiny! You may say this comes badly from me. I know there has been more jest than earnest between me and you. But if I was never serious in my life before I am now, and I want you, too, to take yourself seriously for once. You see, Tiny, I am not only an old married man by this time, but I am your European parent as well. I am entitled to play the heavy father, and to give you a lecture when I think you need one. My dear child, I have been in the world about twice as long as you have, and I know men and have heard of women who have poisoned their whole lives by marrying with love on the other side only; and the greater their worldly goods, the greater has been their misery! And rather than see you do as they have done——" The sentence snapped. "You shan't do it!" he exclaimed sharply. "You're far too good to spoil yourself as others have done and are doing every day."
"Who told you I was good?" inquired Christina, with a touch of the coquetry which even with him she could not entirely repress. "You never had it from me, most certainly. Let me tell you, Erskine, that I'm bad—bad—bad! And if I haven't shocked you sufficiently already it is evidently time that I did; so you'll please to understand that if I marry Lord Manister it is partly because I think I owe it to him; otherwise it's for the main chance purely. And I think it's very unkind of you to make me confess all this," she added fretfully. "I never meant to speak to you about it at all. Only I can't bear you to think me better than I am."
Erskine shook his head sadly.
"At least you have a better side than this, Tiny—this is not you at all! You love and admire all that is honest and noble, and fresh and free; you should give that love and admiration a chance. But I'm not going to say any more to worry you. If you really, with your eyes open, are going to marry a man whom you do not love, I can only tell you that you will be doing at best a very cynical thing. And yet—I can understand it." This he added more to himself than to the girl.
He was turning away, but she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
"Don't go," she exclaimed impulsively. "I can't let you go when—when you understand me better than anyone else ever did—and when I am never, never going to speak to you like this again."
"If only I could help you!"