“Well, if I let you go, will you tell her then that you are engaged to me, and I am going to marry you as soon as possible.”
“No, indeed I won’t!” I said, decidedly.
“I am not going to marry you, or any one, Mr. Carruthers. What do you think of me—! Fancy my consenting to come back here for ever, and live with you—when I don’t know you a bit—and having to put up with your—perhaps—kissing me, and, and—things of that sort! It is perfectly dreadful to think of!”
He laughed as if in spite of himself. “But supposing I promised not to kiss you——?”
“Even so,” I said, and I couldn’t help biting the end of my pen, “it could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else—and there it is! Once you’re married, everything nice is wrong!”
“Evangeline! I won’t let you go—out of my life—you strange little witch, you have upset me, disturbed me, I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much.”
“Pouff!” I said, and I pouted at him.
“You have everything in your life to fill it—position, riches, friends—you don’t want a green-eyed adventuress.”
I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady Katherine. I would be there about 6 o’clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style.