“That,” replied Margaret, “is a very different thing. If you had asked me to marry you, and, after thinking it over for a long while, I had answered Yes, which of course I should not have done, then, perhaps, before we were married you might have—Well, Peter, you have begun at the wrong end, which is very shameless and wicked of you, and I shall never speak to you again.”
“I daresay,” said Peter resignedly; “all the more reason why I should speak to you while I have the chance. No, you shan’t go till you have heard me. Listen. I have been in love with you since you were twelve years old—”
“That must be another falsehood, Peter, or you have gone mad. If you had been in love with me for eleven years, you would have said so.”
“I wanted to, always, but your father refused me leave. I asked him fifteen months ago, but he put me on my word to say nothing.”
“To say nothing—yes, but he could not make you promise to show nothing.”
“I thought that the one thing meant the other; I see now that I have been a fool, and, I suppose, have overstayed my market,” and he looked so depressed that Margaret relented a little.
“Well,” she said, “at any rate it was honest, and of course I am glad that you were honest.”
“You said just now that I told falsehoods—twice; if I am honest, how can I tell falsehoods?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask me riddles? Let me go and try to forget all this.”
“Not till you have answered me outright. Will you marry me, Margaret? If you won’t, there will be no need for you to go, for I shall go and trouble you no more. You know what I am, and all about me, and I have nothing more to say except that, although you may find many finer husbands, you won’t find one who would love and care for you better. I know that you are very beautiful and very rich, while I am neither one nor the other, and often I have wished to Heaven that you were not so beautiful, for sometimes that brings trouble on women who are honest and only have one heart to give, or so rich either. But thus things are, and I cannot change them, and, however poor my chance of hitting the dove, I determined to shoot my bolt and make way for the next archer. Is there any chance at all, Margaret? Tell me, and put me out of pain, for I am not good at so much talking.”