“Oh,” said Miss Taverner foolishly, “I was afraid you meant me to marry your brother!”
“Were you indeed? And was all the determined flirting I have been watching between you merely to show me how willing you were to oblige me? Nonsensical child! I have been in love with you almost from the first moment of setting eyes on you.”
“Oh, this is dreadful!” said Miss Taverner, shaken by remorse. “I disliked you amazingly for weeks!”
The Earl kissed her again. “You are wholly adorable,” he said.
“No, I am not,” replied Miss Taverner, as soon as she was able. “I am as disagreeable as you are. You would like to beat me. You said you would once, and I believe you meant it!”
“If I only said it once I am astonished at my own forbearance. I have wanted to beat you at least a dozen times, and came very near doing it once—at Cuckfield. But I still think you adorable. Give me your hand.”
She held it out, and he slipped a ring on the third finger. “You see, I had got a birthday present for you, Clorinda.”
Miss Taverner raised the hand shyly to touch the Earl’s cheek. He caught it, and pressed it to his lips. She blushed, and said: “I thought—after Cuckfield—I had no power to attach you any more. You made me so unhappy! There was no continued observance, none of that distinguishing notice which had become, insensibly, so necessary to my comfort!”
“That I should have given you one moment’s pain!” he said. “But your words to me at Cuckfield, the tone in which you uttered them, convinced me that nothing could avail to banish that disgust of me which our first meeting had given you.”
She smiled saucily up at him. “You must be so well aware of how little delicacy of principle I have that I need have no scruple in telling you that it is many weeks since I have recalled that first meeting without feeling a strong desire of having your shocking conduct repeated. But after Cuckfield all seemed at an end! I had offended beyond forgiveness. And then the mortification of being found by you in the Yellow Drawing-room that miserable evening! Shall I ever forget my dismay at what you must have been thinking!”