“I suppose it is.”
“It’s so deadly true that it puts an open marriage out of the question altogether. If there were nothing else to be done, it would be different. I’d rather starve than give you up. But there is a way out of it. We can be married secretly. In that way we shall avoid the scenes and the war.”
“And then wait for something to happen? We should be just where we are now. To all intents and purposes you would be Spinster Lauderdale and I should be Bachelor Ralston. I don’t see that it would be the slightest improvement on the present situation—honestly, I don’t. I’m not romantic, as people are in books. I don’t think it would be sweeter than life to call you wife, and when we’re married I shall call you Katharine just the same. I don’t distrust you. You know I don’t. I’m not really afraid that you’ll go and marry Ham Bright, or Frank Miner, nor even the most desirable young man in New York, who has probably proposed to you already. I’m not vain, but I know you love me. I should be a brute if I doubted it—”
“Yes—I think you would, dear,” said Katharine, with great directness.
“So that since I’m to wait for you till ‘something happens’—never mind to whom, and long life to all of them!—I’d rather wait as we are than go through it with a pack of lies to carry.”
“I like you, Jack—besides loving you. It’s quite another feeling, you know. You’re such a man!”
“I wish I were half what you think I am.”
“I’ll think what I please. It’s none of your dear business. But you haven’t heard half I have to say yet. I’ll suppose that we’re married—secretly. Very well. That same day, or the next day, and as soon as possible, I shall go to uncle Robert and tell him the whole truth.”
“To uncle Robert!” exclaimed Ralston, who had not yet come to the end of the surprises in store for him. “And ask him for some money, I suppose? That won’t do, Katharine. Indeed it won’t. I should be letting you go begging for me. That’s the plain English of it. No, no! That can’t be done.”
“You’ll find it hard to prevent me from begging for you, or working for you either, if you ever need it,” said Katharine. There was a certain grand simplicity about the plain statement.