“Find out,” she answered, making the words come in to a tune she was humming.
“Aren’t you going to marry Rees?” asked he, in a loud and stolid tone.
“Not if he were an emperor or an angel,” answered she, simply.
Godwin looked at her for a few moments as if he scarcely dared to take in the meaning of the situation.
“Then you’ll have to marry me,” said he decidedly.
“ ‘Yes, if you please, kind sir, she said,’ ” answered Deborah, with a smile and a deep curtsey.
“But you don’t love me,” whispered Godwin, whose voice had suddenly broken and grown husky.
“Not more than I have done for the last six months. But then that’s a good deal,” added Deborah below her breath.
Rees Pennant displayed the rage of a spoilt child thwarted when, on the return of Godwin and Deborah together, the former announced their engagement. He stormed all that evening at the fickleness and insincerity of women, to a sympathetic accompaniment from his mother, who never quite forgave Deborah for what she called “jilting poor Rees.”
Still in a tumult of angry pique, Rees straightway proposed next day to Lady Marion Cenarth, who accepted him with rapture. He duly married her before many weeks were over, in spite of the opposition of her relations. It was a fate much too good for him, but his punishment lay in the fact that he never understood this, but really believed that the abject sort of happiness Lady Marion found in ministering to his lightest caprice was a more than ample recompense for any woman’s devotion.