“But I have given it now.”
Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no acknowledgment of this.
“Everybody at home would be pleased,” he observed, after a pause occupied by the adjustment of his hat. “They all want it.”
It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but rather that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
“Arthur,” she said, “I think we had better understand each other now. It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good and valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it is No, and it must always be No. I am not the sort of person to change.”
“I suppose,” he replied, en vrai fils de sa mère, “that there is some one else?”
He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
“Please do not let us be like people in books,” she said. “There is no necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you. I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer. I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of that sort. Please spare me the usual—impertinences—about there being somebody else.”