“Surely,” he answered.
“It is this: It is needless for me to say I esteem you; it is unnecessary for me to say that I respect you, but it is because I do both that I feel I may speak frankly. My mother wishes me to marry you, but I do not. Let me tell you, first, that when my father died he left very little, but the little that he left seems to have disappeared, I do not know how or where. I know merely that we have next to nothing, and that we are in debt beside. Something, of course, has had to be done. I have found a position. Where do you suppose?” she asked, with a sudden smile and a complete change of key.
But Mr. Incoul had no surmises.
“In San Francisco! The MacDermotts, you know, the Bonanza people, want me to return with them and teach their daughter how to hold herself, and what not to say. It has been arranged that I am to go next week. Since the other night, however, my mother has told me to give up the MacDermotts and accept your offer. But that, of course, I cannot do.”
“And why not?”
To this Miss Barhyte made no answer.
“You do not care for me, I know; there is slight reason why you should. Yet, might you not, perhaps, in time?”
The girl raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. “So you see,” she continued, “I shall have to go to San Francisco.”
Mr. Incoul remained silent a moment. “If,” he said, at last, “if you will do me the honor to become my wife, in time you will care. It is painful for me to think of you accepting a position which at best is but a shade better than that of a servant, particularly so when I am able—nay, anxious,” he added, pensively—“to surround you with everything which can make life pleasant. I am not old,” he went on to say, “at least not so old that a marriage between us should seem incongruous. I find that I am sincerely attached to you—unselfishly, perhaps, would be the better word—and, if the privilege could be mine, the endeavor to make you happy would be to me more grateful than a second youth. Can you not accept me?”
He had been speaking less to her than to the hat which he held in his hand. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, as though he had sought to weigh each mentally before dowering it with the wings of utterance, but, as he addressed this question he looked up at her. “Can you not?” he repeated.