"No, I am not going out," admitted the girl reluctantly. "I am on duty, you know. Somebody may arrive at any minute," she added, not quite ingenuously. "Let us hope it will be your sister."
"I hope not—not just yet," he protested. "It is so long, Miss Masters, since I have seen you alone. That is my excuse for having remained such an unconscionable time. I have to seize an opportunity."
She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a little, thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an attitude of resignation to the inevitable.
"You can't mistake me," he went on at last eagerly. "I have kept to the stipulation; I have been silent for a long time. I have been to see you, certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I have said nothing to you of the only thing that was in my head. Now"—he hesitated for an instant, then completed his phrase with an intonation almost passionate—"now I want my reward! Can't you—can't you give it me, Mary?"
The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the corners of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little, as though she sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett's choicer bibelôts, from the little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who glanced out at her daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her fête galante. At last she said quietly:
"I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is a great honour you do me, but it's impossible."
"Perhaps I should have waited longer," suggested Charles, after a moment's silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her sentence. "I have taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently considered——"
"Oh, I have considered," cried the girl quickly, with a sudden flush. "I have considered it more seriously than you may believe, more, perhaps, than I ought."
"Than you ought?" he interrupted blankly.
"Yes," she said simply. "I mean that if it could ever have been right to answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at once; thinking would not alter it. I am sorry, chiefly, that I allowed this—this procrastination; that I did not make you take my decision that night, at Lady Mallory's. Yes, for that I was to blame. Only, some day I think you will see that I was right, that it would never have done."