It was with mingled amusement and exasperation that Myra listened to
Tony's account of the interview. She could not help feeling that Don
Carlos had turned the tables on Tony, and now had it in his power to
make her look ridiculous.
"I think he is the most conceited and impudent man in the world," she commented. "And he's clever! If I refuse to go to Auchinleven, he will tell the world it is because I am afraid of falling in love with him. If you withdraw your invitation to him, he will explain it is because you are afraid he might persuade me to elope with him. He will flatter himself we are both afraid of him, and the affair will become the joke of the season."
"Yes, I realise that, Myra," drawled Tony. "He's got that laugh on us, so to speak, and I think it would be best to save our faces by pretending the whole affair was a sort of practical joke on your part. I don't suppose he'll try to make love to you again, and even if he does you will know he is not in earnest."
"Tony, you duffer, let me assure you he is very much in earnest, and he means to take me from you," said Myra. "And I warn you, my dear, that I should probably have fallen for him and jilted you if he wasn't so inordinately proud of himself and hadn't boasted that he would compel me to love him. As it is, I am not sure that I am not in love with him."
"I say, Myra, you're not pulling my leg again, are you?" asked Tony, tugging at his little sandy moustache and looking worried. "I'm in a frightfully awkward position, as I said before. I like the chap immensely, and I think he's too much of a gentleman to poach—although, of course, foreigners have a different code of morals from us, and aren't to be trusted where women are concerned. I—er—I don't quite know what to do, but, of course, I'll do anything rather than risk losing you."
There flashed into his mind as he spoke Don Carlos's remark concerning women complaining of another man's attentions in order to bring a husband or a lover "up to scratch," and he had what he would have described as a "brain wave."
"I say, I've got a bright idea, darling," he continued, before Myra could speak. "Let's solve the difficulty by getting married at once. I'll get a special licence, and we'll set a new fashion by entertaining a house party in the Highlands during our honeymoon. Even the boldest man would surely hesitate to make love to another man's wife during her honeymoon. What do you say?"
Myra pursed her red lips and wrinkled her brows in thought, and Tony took her indecision to be a good sign.
"Say 'yes,' darling," he urged. "You know I'm most tremendously in love with you and frightfully keen, and you will have no further reason to feel afraid of Don Carlos when you are my wife."
"I'm not afraid of Don Carlos," snapped Myra. "Oh, Tony, don't be so dense and exasperating! Almost I wish now I had never told you about the tiresome and conceited creature's love-making… Besides," she added, inconsequentially, "I don't want to get married yet, and if I did marry you before we go to Scotland Don Carlos would pride himself it was to protect myself from him, and it would be worse and more dangerous if he made love to me as a married woman. Oh, Tony, my dear, I'm getting mixed, but maybe you understand what I mean. I'm not afraid of Don Carlos, but I don't want to give him any chance of going about boasting that I am in love with him."