He laughed in concert.
"If you like, darling," he answered, "at some future time; but not whilst I'm alive. It's my turn first."
"Oh, Frank!" was all she said; and for a moment she felt she loved him too dearly to sacrifice him to such a fate.
But the temptation was overwhelming. So many considerations crowded on her brain: her state of dependence, now more than ever irksome since the late difference with Mrs. Lascelles; the awkwardness of meeting Uncle Joseph daily, and the impossibility of refusing to give him a decided answer; the equal impossibility, after all she had led him to expect, of saying anything but Yes; the delight—and this to one of her temperament and antecedents was not without considerable charm—of anything like an elopement or a clandestine marriage, not counting the triumph of carrying off such a prize as Frank Vanguard from the many women who would be too happy to make him their lawful prey; the impression—vague, unreasoning, and essentially feminine—that such a step would free her at once and for ever from any claim Picard might advance on her person, her belongings, or her child; finally, and it is only justice to insist that this was the strongest inducement of all—the undisturbed possession of that child, whom she resolved to carry off with her in her flight, but whose relationship to herself, it pained her to think, she must now disguise for evermore.
Vanguard, drawing her towards him, was surprised to find the tears running down her cheeks.
He didn't care if a hundred Lady Shuttlecocks were watching: he wound his arm round her waist, and she buried her face impulsively in his breast. For half a minute or so, they were both very much in earnest and very happy.
Then she looked up, and adjusted her bonnet with a smile.
"How shocked St. Sebastian will be!" she observed; that sparingly-clothed martyr, execrably painted, having indeed been the only witness of this improper ebullition.
"It must be done at once," said Frank; now that he was fairly in for it, characteristically keen and impatient of inaction. "You can't go back to No. 40. I won't have you persecuted by that old idiot, Groves. We ought to start from here, you and I, just as we are—swagger into the first church that we see—they're always open—and get it over."
She smiled very sweetly now on his impatience.