“Didn’t I do it handsomely? Why, he isn’t here!” And at that moment she caught sight of Baskerville sitting by Anne Clavering’s side in her brougham, then whirling around the corner. Mrs. Luttrell smiled and then sighed. “The scamp,” she said to herself. “I remember how once—” She took from her pocket the miniature which never left her, and her memory went back to the days when to recline in that man’s arms and to feel his kisses upon her lips were Paradise, a paradise to which the gate had been forever closed to any other man.
Baskerville had got into his present agreeable situation by simply not waiting for an invitation, and furthermore by saying authoritatively to the footman, “Miss Clavering wishes to drive out Connecticut Avenue until she directs you to turn.”
It was all done so suddenly that Anne did not realize it until it was over; but what woman who loves is averse to having the man of her choice sitting by her side in the intimate seclusion of a brougham at dusk of a winter’s evening? Baskerville, however, was there for a purpose—a purpose quickly formed but to be resolutely carried out. He said to Anne: “I saw that my aunt’s heedless words embarrassed you, and I felt sorry for you. But it was quite true—I made her promise to apologize to you; and as long as I live, as far as I have the power, I shall force everybody who injures you to make you amends.”
Baskerville’s eyes, fastened upon Anne, gave a deeper meaning to his words. The flush faded from Anne’s cheeks, and she looked at Baskerville with troubled eyes, knowing a crisis was at hand. “I am very bold in forcing myself on you,” he said, “but the time has come for me to speak. I have not the same chance as other men, because I can’t go to your father’s house. I went once upon your mother’s kind invitation, but I doubt whether I should have done so; I can only plead my desire to see you, and I feel I can’t go again. You know, perhaps, that I am one of the lawyers engaged in prosecuting this investigation before the Senate. If I had known you before I began it, I would have never gone into it. But being in it I can’t honorably withdraw. Perhaps you can’t forgive me for what I have done, but it has not kept me from loving you with all my soul.”
Anne shrank back in the carriage. At any other time she would have heard these words with palpitating joy; and even now they opened to her a momentary glimpse of Paradise. But the memory of all that was said and done about her father, the conviction of his impending disgrace, overwhelmed her. She sat silent and ashamed, longing to accept the sweetness of the love offered her, conscious of her own integrity, but with a primitive honest pride, reluctant to give any man the dower of disgrace which she felt went with her father’s daughter.
Silence on the part of the beloved usually augurs well to the lover, but when Anne’s silence was accentuated by two large tears that dropped upon her cheeks Baskerville realized that they were not happy tears. He would have soothed her with a lover’s tenderness, but Anne repulsed him with a strange pride. “You are not to blame for what you have done in my father’s case, but I know, as well as you do, that before this month is out my father may be a disgraced man. And although you may not believe it—you with your generations of ladies and gentlemen behind you”—she spoke with a certain bitterness—“may not believe that the daughter of people like my father and my mother can have any pride, yet I have—whether I am entitled to it or not. I would not take a disgraced name to any man.”
Baskerville’s answer to this was to take her two hands in his. It became difficult for her to be haughty to a man who plainly indicated that he meant to kiss her within five minutes. And he did.
Anne’s protests were not those of a woman meaning to yield; Baskerville saw that she felt a real shame, the genuine reluctance of a high and honorable spirit. But it was swept away in the torrent of a sincere and manly love. When they parted at Anne’s door Baskerville had wrung from her the confession of her love, and they were, to each other, acknowledged lovers.
That night Anne and her father dined alone. Élise and Lydia were dining out with some of their “larky” friends, and Reginald was out of town. Clavering noted that Anne was rather silent. Anne for her part looked at her father with a kind of resentment she had often felt before. What right had he to dower his children with his own evil deeds? Why, instead of acquiring a vast fortune, which he spent on them, as on himself, with lavishness, should he not have given them a decent inheritance. Was it not wholly through him that she had not been able to give herself freely and joyfully to the man who loved her and whom she loved? With these thoughts in her mind she sat through the dinner, silent and distrait; but she could not wholly subdue the happiness that Baskerville had given her, even though happiness with her could never be without alloy.