“Oh! you have deceived me then!” he said, in self-righteous wrath. “After all I said to you that evening at Tryland, and what you promised then! Yes, you have grossly deceived me.”
I could not say I had not listened to a word he had said that night, and was utterly unconscious of what I had promised. Even his self-appreciation did not deserve such a blow as this! so I softened my voice, and natural anger at his words, and said quite gently,
“Do not be angry. If I have unconsciously given you a wrong impression, I am sorry, but if one came to talking of deceiving, you have deceived me about Miss Grey, so do not let us speak further upon the matter. We are quits. Now, won’t you be friends, as you have always been”—and I put out my hand, and smiled frankly in his face. The mean little lines in it relaxed—he pulled himself together and took my hand, and pressed it warmly. From which I knew there was more in the affair of Angela Grey than met the eye.
“Evangeline,” he said. “I shall always love you, but Miss Grey is an estimable young woman, there is not a word to be said against her moral character—and I have promised her my hand in marriage—so perhaps we had better say good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said, “but I consider I have every reason to feel insulted by your offer, which was not, judging from your subsequent remarks, worth a moment’s thought!”
“Oh, but I love you!” he said, and by his face, for the time, this was probably true. So I did not say any more, and we rose and joined the bridge players. And I contrived that he should not speak to me again alone before he said good-night.
“Did Malcolm propose to you,” Lady Ver asked, as we came up to bed. “I thought I saw a look in his eye at dinner.”
I told her he had done it in a kind of way, with a reservation in favour of Miss Angela Grey.
“That is too dreadful!” she said. “There is a regular epidemic in some of the Guards’ regiments just now to marry these poor common things with high moral characters, and—indifferent feet! but I should have thought the cuteness of the Scot would have protected Malcolm from their designs. Poor Aunt Katherine!”