He was beginning to enjoy the rounding off of his sentences—a pleasure he had never tasted in May's company; strong emotion being unfavourable to polished periods.
"Oh, I don't think you were ever guilty of precipitation," answered Constance quietly. But the mirror opposite reflected a flash of her handsome eyes.
"Nothing," continued Theodore, "could be in worse taste than to neglect the accustomed forms of respect. A period of twelve months would not be too long to mourn for a parent so excellent as my father; but six months could not be considered to outrage decorum. And I should not urge——"
He paused. He had been on the point of saying that he would not press for the marriage taking place before the summer, when he happily remembered that he had not yet gone through the form of asking Constance whether she would marry him or not. To him it seemed so like merely taking up the thread of a story temporarily interrupted, that he had lost sight of the probability that Constance's mind had not been keeping pace with his own on the subject. But it recurred to him in time.
Constance was sitting on a low couch near the fireside, at some distance from him. He now took his place beside her. There was a certain awkwardness in making a proposal of marriage across a spacious room.
"There can be no need of many words between us, Constance," he began, with as much tenderness of manner as he could call up. Then he stopped. Constance had drawn away the skirt of her gown on the side next to him, and was examining it attentively. "What is the matter?" he asked.
"I thought you had accidentally set your boot on the hem of my frock," she said. "And the roads are so muddy, although it is fine overhead! But it's all right. I beg your pardon: you were saying——?"
This interruption was disconcerting. He had had in his head an elaborate sentence which was now dispersed and irrecoverable. He must begin all over again. However, when fairly started once more, his eloquence did not fail him. He offered his hand and fortune to Miss Hadlow, "in good set terms."
She was silent when he had finished, and he ventured to take her hand.
"Am I not to have an answer, dearest Constance?" he asked.