“Her name?” faltered Mr. Bendibow. “Why, it’s—you!”
“See how stupid I am!” exclaimed the Marquise, laughing with an air of perplexity. “I meant to ask you what is the name of the lady you intend to marry?”
“Don’t I tell you ’tis you? Who else, since we both love”—
The Marquise threw up her hand; her eyes flashed: there was an instant’s dead silence. Then she said in a low voice of mingled amazement and indignation, “You, Thomas Bendibow, marry me!” And she added, with a tragic tone and gesture, “You trifle with me, sir!”
“ ’Pon my soul, Perdita,” asseverated the wretched Thomas, quaking at he knew not what, “I never was further from trifling in my life. I mean an honest thing, and I mean it with all my heart. And I can’t think what you’re so angry”—
“You have shocked me, Tom—and grieved me! I can’t tell you what you’ve made me suffer. You—my brother—to betray your sister’s confidence and twist her words like that! I shall never trust another man as long as I live—no, never!”
“But I never thought ... and besides, you’re not my sister at all!” stammered Tom, from pale becoming very red. “You know that my father is no more yours than—than I am; nor my mother neither! But if you don’t want to have me, you should put it on some fairer ground than that. I offered you the most a man can give a woman; and I’m in right dead earnest, too!”
The Marquise, having played out her little comedy to her satisfaction, was now ready to deal with her victim on a less fanciful basis.
“Sit down here, Tom,” she said, “and look at me, my dear. Yes, I am a beautiful woman; and I am wise: at least ten times as wise as you will ever be. And I’ve seen the world—the great world; and ... I’m a widow! All the finest gentlemen in Europe have made love to me. I knew you’d fancy you’d lost your heart to me too; and for both our sakes I wished the affair over as soon as possible. You could no more be my husband, my dear, than you could wear the moon on your watch-chain. My husband—if I ever have another—will be a man wiser, stronger, and handsomer than I am: a man who can rule me with a word or a look: a king of men—and that’s more than a king of nations. How near do you come to being such a man as that? You and I might go to church together, and a priest might pronounce the marriage service over us; but it would take more than a priest and a marriage service, Tom, to make you and me man and wife! The man who can be my husband will have no need of forms of law and religion to keep me safe; though we’d have those, too,” she added with an odd smile, “because it’s proper!”
Tom pulled up his stock ruefully, and strove to maintain as manly a bearing as possible. “I know I’m nothing very great,” he said; “but loving a woman like you makes a fellow ever so much better, and more of a fellow than he was before. If it hadn’t been for that, maybe I wouldn’t have dared say anything. But if you won’t have me, Perdita, I suppose.... I shall have ... to do without you! And I wish I’d never been born! I beg your pardon. I think I’d better go!”