"Will you let me try if it will fit you?" he answered; and, before she had recovered from her surprise, he had put it on her finger.
There was a very awkward pause, and then she drew it off. "You can hardly expect me," she said, and her hand trembled a little, "to accept such a very costly present." It was not her reason for returning it, but she knew not what to say.
"I would not ask it," he replied, "unless I could offer you another. I desire to make you my wife. I beg you to accept my hand."
"Accept your hand! What, now? directly? today?" she exclaimed almost piteously, and tears trembled on her eye-lashes.
"Yes," he answered, repeating her words with something like ardour. "Now, directly, to-day. I am sorely in want of a wife, and would fain take you home as soon as the bans would let me. Emily?"
"Why you have been taking all possible pains to let me know that you do not love me in the least, and that, as far as you foresee, you do not mean to love me," she answered, two great tears falling on his hand when he tried to take hers. "John! how dare you!"
She was not naturally passionate, but startled now into this passionate appeal, she snatched away her hand, rose in haste, and drew back from him with flashing eyes and a heaving bosom; but all too soon the short relief she had found in anger was quenched in tears that she did not try to check. She stood and wept, and he, very pale and very much discomfited, sat before her in his place.
"I beg your pardon," he presently said, not in the least aware of what this really meant. "I beg—I entreat your pardon. I scarcely thought—forgive my saying it—I scarcely thought, considering our past—and—and—my position, as the father of a large family, that you would have consented to any wooing in the girl and boy fashion. You make me wish, for once in my life—yes, very-heartily wish, that I had been less direct, less candid," he added rather bitterly. "I thought"—here Emily heard him call himself a fool—"I thought you would approve it."
"I do," she answered with a great sobbing sigh. Oh, there was nothing more for her to say; she could not entreat him now to let her teach him to love her. She felt, with a sinking heart, that if he took her words for a refusal, and by no means a gentle one, it could not be wondered at.
Presently he said, still looking amazed and pale, for he was utterly unused to a woman's tears, and as much agitated now in a man's fashion as she was in hers,