"You're so plausible," she said. "You put it as a favor to me. Did it ever strike you that if the truth were known it might also be uncomfortable for you?"
He smiled across at her and once more she frowned as she discovered that he was likeable for all his underhandedness.
"Worse than that—suicidal," he admitted.
"If you mentioned what you think of me, that I've framed to rob you by law, you wouldn't be bothered with me for long." He laughed softly and stretched his feet toward the fire. "Look at it any way you like and I'm in bad shape to deal you any misery," he pointed out. "If you'd drop a hint that I'm an unwelcome addition it would only be a matter of days until I'd fail to show up for meals. If you view it from that angle you can see I'm setting on the powder can."
She did see it, but had not so clearly realized it till he pointed it out, and for the first time she wavered in her conviction that he had come simply to deprive her of her rights. But the thought that her father would not easily have willed away the home place to another without being unduly influenced served to reinstate her distrust along with a vague resentment for his having shaken it by throwing himself so openly on her mercy.
"You probably thought to overcome that by reaching the point the whole thing so patently aims for," she said. "And you calculated well—arriving at a time when we'd be alone for a week. The whole scheme was based on that idea and I've been patiently wondering why you don't rush matters and invite me to marry you."
He rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fireplace.
"I do invite you—right now," he said, and in her surprise she left her chair and stood facing him. "I'd like real well to have you, Billie."
"That's the final proof," she said. "I'm surprised that you didn't tell me the first day."
"So am I," he said.