"I beg your pardon, Miles. It's confoundedly hard to confide in anyone after six years' solitude." He struggled into his coat as he spoke, and settled his cravat. "If you want to know the whole truth, 'tis because of Diana that I am going."
"Of course. Ye are in love with her?"
"It rather points that way, does it not?"
"Then why the divil don't ye ask her to marry ye?"
"Why don't I ask her? Because I will not offer her a smirched name! Because I love her so much that—" He broke off with a shaky, furious laugh. "How can you ask me such a question? I am a desirable parti, hein? Nom d'un nom! For what do you take me?"
O'Hara looked up, calmly studying the wrathful countenance.
"Chivalrous young fool," he drawled.
Again the short, angry laugh.
"It is so likely that I should ask her to marry me, is it not? 'Mademoiselle, you see in me an improvident fool: I began life by cheating at cards, and since then—' Oh, I shall believe it myself ere long! I seem to have told it to so many people. And I lay myself open to the impertinences of—" he checked himself, thinking of the interview downstairs with Mr. Beauleigh.
"Rubbish, Jack."