“I don’t believe you mean to marry me,” he said sulkily.
She leaned towards him, till her arm touched his. “Yes. I do mean. You know I do! And I will be a good wife to you, even if I’m beneath your station, my darling Barty. But there’s not one of your brothers, nor your father neither, would leave you marry me, if they could stop it. We must be sensible. If it were found out you were keeping company with me before you’ve twopence to call your own, they’d send me packing, and manage it so that you couldn’t come next or nigh me.”
That made him laugh; and he hugged her to him, and pinched her cheek. “You don’t know me if you think any one of them could manage anything of the kind! Besides, why should my brothers care what I do?”
“Your brother Conrad would,” she insisted. “Bart, I do be afraid of Conrad. He looks at me as though he’d like to see me dead.”
“What rot!” he scoffed. “Con? Why, you silly little thing, Loveday, Con’s my twin!”
“He’s jealous,” she said.
But Bart only laughed again, because such an idea was so alien to his own nature as to be ridiculous to him. If Conrad looked darkly, he supposed him to be out of sorts, and gave the matter not another thought. When Loveday suggested that Conrad might divulge their secret to Penhallow, he replied without an instant’s hesitation: “He wouldn’t. Even Eugene-wouldn’t do that. We don’t give each other away to the Guv’nor.”
Her fingers twined themselves between his. "Jimmy would,” she said, under her breath.
“What?” he exclaimed.
“Hush, my dear, you’ll have one of the girls over hearing you, and telling my uncle on me! Jimmy wouldn’t make any bones about carrying tales to your father.”