“Now, are you going—of your own accord?” she asked firmly, and rather menacingly.
“I don’t know how you ever expect to get married if you cut a fellow so short when he’s getting near the brink of a proposal.”
“Now, are you going?”
“Yes, yes,” said he, hastily, as she made one step towards him; “I’m going. Though I don’t see why I should be the only man turned out, when I’ll bet I’m the only one with matrimonial intentions.”
“You don’t consider that you are the only one with the audacity to spy upon me and to enter this house like a burglar.”
“Now how did you guess that? Why, you must have been only shamming sleep then, when I hung on to the window-sill outside, and saw you looking so invitingly like Cinderella that I was obliged to come in to get a nearer view.”
Miss Denison was breathless with indignation. He continued—
“As for spying, I’m not the only one. I’ve caught the parson prowling about here these two evenings. And, look here, of course I saw from the first you liked him better than me, and now you have heard the story about him, no doubt you think him more interesting than ever. But I don’t intend to be snubbed for a murderer. And so I tell you this, Miss Denison: if you are any more civil to him than you are to me, I’ll just spread abroad something I know and that nobody else knows, and that is: how he disposed of the body of the first poor girl who was unlucky enough to have anything to do with him. And perhaps that will stop you from being the second.”
With these words Mr. Williams came out from his place of refuge behind the armchair, and keeping at a respectful distance from the fair but stalwart arm which he had already learnt to fear, sidled out of the room with a swaggering bow. He looked back, however, when he was safely outside the door.
“Don’t lose heart,” he said. “I shall make you another offer some day; perhaps half a dozen. They’ll come to be your one amusement in this hole.”