"Even to Bate!" echoed Martha with a sniff. "If I'd my choice, Miss H'Aura, I'd as lief mention it to the town-crier. Not that Bate doesn't mean well. It ain't his fault being born so; but there, one must just take holt of men as they're made, and be thankful they is no worse."
Why this should have heartened Aura up it is hard to say, but it did. She actually smiled. "What I wanted to ask was this, Martha. In your experience--do you think it hurts a man very much to be in love--I mean, of course, to be in love with some one who doesn't want--I mean who won't marry him?"
Martha poised the rolling-pin on one hip, her hand on the other.
"Hurt 'em!" she echoed. "Lord sakes, no! It's the makin' o' them. Bate wouldn't be 'alf so spry at his years if he 'adn't bin wantin' to marry me any time this fourteen year back. That's why I won't 'ave him even now, Miss H'Aura. 'Bate,' says I, 'if I was to take you now, you'd get fat an' lazy. You wouldn't rise no more. You'd be like whipped eggs as is let stand, all gone to froth an' water.' No! Miss H'Aura, men is like heggs, they want beatin' 'ard all the time, else they'll never rise to better things."
The rolling-pin came down on the pastry with more decision than ever, and Aura laughed out loud. Something in the very phrasing of the last words comforted her.
Yet she was not quite content as she changed her day-dress for the white cambric one she wore in the evening; after all, it was but putting it on an hour or so before her usual time, and the Mechlin lace about her throat was a concession which would please her grandfather.
"Aura!--my dearest, you look quite bridal," exclaimed Ted, as he came in to find her sitting by the firelight. "It seems too good to be true--but the rector will be here in half an hour." He knelt down beside her, and laid his head in her lap. "My dear, my dear!" he said almost with a sob. "I don't seem able to say anything but that, somehow," he added almost pathetically. Far away, dimly, he saw a vision of something better, unattainable, incompatible with his sensuous life. It was beautiful but--what would you? Man is but man; and he must have money wherewith to live.
"Then there is something which I must tell you--before," she said; "it is something which I think you ought to know. Ned asked me to marry him on New Year's Day--and I refused."
Ted's heart gave a great throb as it had done when Ned Blackborough had used much the same words nearly a month before.
"I--I am sorry for Ned," he said softly, "but I don't see----"