“Oh, it wouldn’t come to that.”
“But suppose it had come to that?” she persevered. “Suppose she’d set her heart upon you? Would it be fair to her not to tell her?”
“What would be the good of my telling her, since I couldn’t possibly ask her to marry me?”
“The fact might interest her, apart from the question of its consequences,” Johannah suggested. “But suppose she told you? Suppose she asked you to marry her?”
“She wouldn’t,” said he.
“All hypotheses are admissible. Suppose she should?”
“I couldn’t marry her,” he declared.
“You’d find it rather an awkward job refusing, wouldn’t you?” she quizzed. “And what reasons could you give?”
“Ten thousand reasons. I’m a bastard. That begins and ends it. It would dishonour her, and it would dishonour me; and, worst of all, it would dishonour my mother.”
“It would certainly not dishonour you, nor the woman you married. That’s the sheerest, antiquated, exploded rubbish. And how on earth could it dishonour your mother?”