“Oh, how lovely!” said Clotilde softly.
“Ain’t they?” said Elbraham. “They’re the best they’d got at Hancock’s, in Bond Street. Pretty stiff figure, too, I can tell you.”
“Are you fond of diamonds, Mr Elbraham?” she said, with a peculiar look at him from beneath her darkly fringed lids—a strange look for one so innocent and young.
“Yes, on some people,” he said. “Are you?”
“Oh yes; I love them,” she said eagerly.
“All right, then. Look here, Clotilde; say the word, and you can have diamonds till you are sick of them, and everything else. I—hang it all! I’m not used to this sort of thing,” he said, dabbing his moist face with his handkerchief; “but I said to myself, when I came to-night, ‘I won’t shilly-shally, but ask her out plain.’ So look here, my dear, may I put this diamond ring on the finger of the lady that’s to be Mrs Elbraham as soon as she likes?”
Clotilde darted one luminous look at him which took in his squat, vulgar figure and red face, and then her eyes half-closed, and she saw tall, manly, handsome Marcus Glen look appealingly in her eyes, and telling her he loved her with all his heart.
She loved him—she told herself she loved him very dearly; but he was poor, and on the one side was life in lodgings in provincial towns wherever the regiment was stationed; on the other side, horses and carriages and servants, a splendid town mansion, diamonds, dresses, the opera, every luxury and gaiety that money could command.
“Poor Marcus!” she sighed to herself. “He’s very nice!”
“Come,” said Mr Elbraham; “I don’t suppose you want me to go down on my knees and propose, do you? I want to do the thing right, but I’m a business man, you know; and, I say, Clotilde, you’re the most beautiful gal I ever saw in my life.”