“You don’t appear old or dull to me,” she said softly. “I—didn’t mean that.”
He went closer to her and remained gazing earnestly into the downcast face, his own tense features and motionless pose not more still than the girl’s, as she waited quietly in the silent dusk with a heart which thumped so violently that it seemed to her he must hear its rapid beat.
“It appears to me preposterous,” he said, in a voice which held a ring of wonder in its tones, “that I, so much older than you, so unsuited in every sense, should find the courage to tell you how greatly I love you. It is scarcely to be expected that you can care for me sufficiently to allow me any hope... And yet... Miss Annersley, am I too presumptuous?”
“No,” Peggy whispered. She slipped a hand shyly into his and laughed softly. “I think you have discovered the best way of settling the ownership of our dog,” she said.
“I am not thinking of the dog,” he answered, bending over her.
“I wasn’t thinking of the dog either,” she replied.
With her hand still in John Musgrave’s she walked to the parapet and sat down. Mr Musgrave seated himself beside her, and, gaining courage from the contact of the warm hand lying so confidingly in his own, he felt emboldened to proceed with his avowal of love.
“My feeling for you, Miss Annersley, is as unchangeable as it is deep. It has developed so imperceptibly that, until you went away, and I realised how greatly I missed you, what a blank in my days your absence made, I never suspected how dear you were becoming to me. When I suspected it I was distressed, because it seemed to me incredible that you, young and beautiful and so greatly admired, could ever entertain for me any kinder feeling than that of friendship. I can scarcely believe even now that you feel more than friendship for me. I must appear old to you, and my ideas are old-fashioned, and, I begin to see now, intolerant.”
“Not intolerant,” Peggy corrected. “If I wasn’t confident that your heart is so kind, and your sympathies so wide, that it will be as easy for you to give and take as for me to meet you in this respect, I should be afraid to risk the happiness of both our futures. But I haven’t any fears at all. I think I have loved you from the moment when you met me weeping in the road, and took charge of Diogenes.”
“That,” he said a little doubtfully, “is gratitude.”