Evelyn made no answer, and he indicated the seat. “Won’t you sit down, I have something more to say.”
The girl did as he suggested, and his smile faded. “Now,” he went on, “you won’t be astonished if I ask if you will marry me?”
He stood looking down on her with an impressive steadiness of gaze. She could imagine him facing the city men, from whom he had extorted the full value of his mine, in the same fashion, and in a later instance, so surveying the eddies beneath the osiers when he had gone to Mabel’s rescue. She felt that they had better understand one another.
“No,” she said; “if I must be candid, I am not astonished.” Then the colour crept into her cheeks, is she met his gaze. “I suppose it is an honour and it is undoubtedly a—temptation.”
“A temptation?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn, mustering her courage to face a crisis she had dreaded. “It is only due to you that you should hear the truth—though I think you suspect it. I have some liking for you.”
“That is what I wanted you to own,” Vane broke in.
She checked him with a gesture. Her manner was cold, and yet there was something in it that stirred him more than her beauty.
“After all,” she answered, “It does not go very far, and you must try to understand. I want to be quite honest, and what I have to say is—difficult. In the first place, things are far from pleasant for me here; I was expected to make a good marriage, and I had my chance in London; I refused to profit by it, and now I’m a failure. I wonder if you can realise what a temptation it is to get away.”
“Yes,” he said; “it makes me savage to think of it. I can, at least, take you out of all this. If you hadn’t had a very fine courage, you wouldn’t have told me.”