“What about?” asked Hetty, innocently: “I don't see what there is to puzzle you here.”
“You, Miss Gunn,” stoutly answered Dr. Eben, feeling as if he were taking a header into unfathomed waters. “Me!” exclaimed Hetty, in a tone of utmost surprise. “Why, what do you mean?”
Dr. Eben hesitated a single instant. He had not intended to do this thing, but the occasion had been too much for him. “I may as well do it first as last,” he said; “she can but refuse me:” and, in a very few manly words, Dr. Eben Williams straightway asked Hetty Gunn to marry him. He was not prepared for what followed, although in a soliloquy, only a few days before, he had predicted it to himself. Hetty laughed merrily, unaffectedly, in his very face.
“Why, Dr. Williams!” she said, “you can't know what you're saying. You can't want to marry me: I'm not the sort of woman men want to marry”—
He interrupted her. His voice was husky with deep feeling.
“Miss Gunn,” he said, “I implore you not to speak in this way. I do know what I am saying, and I do love you with all my heart.”
“Nonsense,” answered Hetty in the kindliest of tones; “of course you think you do: but it is only because you have been shut up here two whole months, with nothing else to do but fancy that you were in love. I told you it was time we went home. Don't say any thing more about it. I'll promise you to forget it all,” and Hetty laughed again, a merry little laugh. A sharp suspicion crossed the doctor's mind that she was coquetting with him. In a constrained tone he said:
“Miss Gunn, do you really wish me to understand that you reject me?”
“Not at all,” said Hetty, gayly. “I wish you to understand that I haven't permitted you to offer yourself. I have simply assured you that you are mistaken: you'll see it for yourself as soon as we get home. Do you suppose I shouldn't know if you were really in love with me?”
“I didn't know it myself till a week ago,” replied Dr. Eben: “I did not understand myself. I never loved any woman before.”