Selah stopped a minute, and tapped the hard ground two or three times angrily with the point of her umbrella. ‘And me, Ronald?’ she said in a curious defiant voice. ‘And ME? I suppose you’ve forgotten all about ME. You don’t ask me to marry you because you love me; you don’t ask me whether I love you or not; you only propose to me that I should quietly turn domestic housekeeper for Mrs. Ernest Le Breton. And for my part, I answer you plainly, once for all, that I’m not going to do it—no, never, never, never!’
She spoke haughtily, flashing her eyes at him in the fierce old fashion, and Ronald was almost frightened at the angry intensity of her contemptuous gestures. ‘Selah,’ he cried, trying to take her hand, which she tore away from him hurriedly: ‘Selah, you misunderstand me. I only approached the subject that way because I didn’t want to seem overweening and presumptuous. It’s a very great piece of vanity, it seems to me, for any man to ask a woman whether she loves him. I’m too conscious of all my own faults and failings, Selah, to venture upon asking you ever to love me; but I do love you, Selah, I’m sure I do love you; and I hoped, I somehow fancied—it may have been mere fancy, but I DID imagine—that I detected, I can’t say how, that you did really love me, too, just a very very little. Oh, Selah, it’s because I really love you that I ask you whether you’ll marry me, such as I am; I know I’m a poor sort of person to marry, but I ventured to hope you might love me just a little for all that.’
He looked so frail and gentle as he stood there pleading in the pale moonlight, that Selah could have taken him to her bosom then and there and fondled him as one would pet a sick child, for pure womanliness; but the devil in her blood kept her from doing it, and she answered haughtily, instead: ‘Ronald, if you wanted to marry me, you ought to have asked me for my own sake. Now that you’ve asked me for another’s, you can’t expect me to give you an answer. Keep your money, my poor boy; you’ll want it all for you and her hereafter; don’t go sharing it and spending it on perfect strangers such as me. And don’t go talking to me again about this business as long as your sister-in-law is unprovided for. I’m not going to take the bread out of her mouth, and I’m not going to marry a man who doesn’t utterly and entirely love me.’
‘But I do,’ Ronald answered, earnestly; ‘I do, Selah; I love you truly and faithfully from the very bottom of my heart.’
‘Leave off, Roland,’ Selah said in the same angry tone. ‘If you ever talk to me of this again, I give you my word of honour about it, I’ll never speak another word to you.’
And Ronald, who deeply respected the sanctity of a promise, were it only a threat, bided his time, and said no more about it for the present.
Next day, as Ronald sat reading in his own rooms, he was much surprised at hearing a well-known voice at the door, inquiring with some asperity whether Mr. Le Breton was at home. He listened to the voice in intense astonishment. It was his mother’s.
‘Ronald,’ Lady Le Breton began, the moment she had been shown into his little sitting-room, ‘I didn’t think, after your undutiful, ungrateful conduct—with that abominable woman, too—that I should ever have come to see you, unless you came first, as you ought clearly to do, and begged my pardon penitently for your disgraceful behaviour. It’s hard, I know, to acknowledge oneself in the wrong, but every Christian ought to be above vindictiveness and obstinate self-will; and I expect you, therefore, sooner or later, to come and ask forgiveness for your dreadful unkindness to me. Till then, as I said, I didn’t expect to call upon you in any way. But I’ve felt compelled to-day to come and speak to you about a matter of duty, and as a matter of duty strictly I regard it, not as any relaxation of my just attitude of indignant expectancy towards yourself; no parent ought rightly to overlook such conduct as yours on the part of a son.’ Ronald inclined his head respectfully. ‘Well, what I’ve come to speak to you about to-day, Ronald, is about your poor misguided brother Ernest. He, too, as you know, has behaved very badly to me.’
‘No,’ Ronald answered stoutly, without further note or comment. Where the matter touched himself only he could maintain a decent silence, but where it touched poor dying Ernest he couldn’t possibly restrain himself, even from a sense of filial obligation.
‘Very badly to me,’ Lady Le Breton went on sternly, without in any way noticing the brief interruption, ‘and I can’t, of course, go to see him either, especially not as I should by so doing expose myself to meeting the person whom he has chosen to make his wife. Still, as I hear that Ernest a in a very serious or even dangerous condition——’