He sat leaning a little towards her, his hands folded together, and his face illuminated for a moment with intense love and anxiety. But Miss Carnethy did not see the look, and only heard the formal proposition his words conveyed. She saw a man standing in the door near them; she knew him—a Mr. Batiscombe, an English man of letters—and she wondered a little whether he would have used the same phrases in asking a woman to marry him,—whether all men would speak alike in such a case.
She had looked forward to this scene—more than once. Again the figure of the ideal lover of her dreams came to her, and seemed to pour out strong speech of love. Again she involuntarily drew a comparison in her mind between Marcantonio and some one, something she could not define. On a sudden all the honesty of her conscience sprang up and showed her what she really felt.
A thousand times she had said to herself that she would never marry a man she did not love; and for once that she had said it to herself, she had said it ten times over to her friends, feeling that she was inculcating a good and serviceable lesson. And now her conscience told her that she did not love Marcantonio,—at least not truly, certainly not as much as she would have liked to love. Then she remembered what she had thought that afternoon. How was it possible that she could have thought of him for a moment as her husband, if she did not love him,—especially with her high standard about such things? Oh, that high standard! With a quick transition of thought she made up her mind; but there was a strange little feeling of pain in her, such as the prince might have felt in the fairy tale when the ring pricked him. Nevertheless, her mind was made up.
"Yes," she said very suddenly, turning so that she could almost see his eyes, but not quite, for she instinctively dreaded to look him in the face; "yes, I will be your wife."
"Merci, mademoiselle," he said. The room was nearly empty at the moment, and Marcantonio took her passive hand and touched her fingers with his lips, being quite sure that no one was looking. But the man who stood at the door saw it.
"Such a good match, you know!" said some people, who had no prejudices.
"Such a special grace!" said the resident Anglo-American Catholics; "he is quite sure to convert her!"
"Such a special grace!" exclaimed the resident Anglo-American Protestants; "she is quite sure to lead him back!"
"Il faut toujours se méfier des saints," remarked Marcantonio's uncle, concerning his nephew.
"Never trust red-haired women," said the man who had stood at the door.