"Oh, no. I cannot sit while you stand."
"But I am a young girl, and you are an old man," I said. "Do, please, sit down. You look very tired, too," I added, and I gave him an affectionate glance, for I really quite liked him.
His face flushed uncomfortably when I called him an old man; but I could not by any possibility think of him in any other light.
"I cannot sit," he said. "Old or young, I must stand at the present moment. I thought to write to you, but her ladyship said, 'Better speak.' Have I your leave, Miss Grayson, to say a few words? Do you greatly mind?"
"They call me Dalrymple here," I answered, speaking in a weary voice.
"I know that, but your real name is Grayson, and I mean to call you by it. Whatever the rest of the world may feel, I am not ashamed of your real name."
"Is anyone?" I asked. I was sitting on the sofa now; my cheeks were blazing hotly, and my eyes were very bright.
"Of course not," he answered, and he fixed his tired eyes for a minute on my face.
"My child," he said—and surely no voice in all the world could be kinder—"it is my firm intention not to allow you to be forced in any way. I will lay a proposition before you, and you are to accept or decline it, just exactly as you like. If you accept it, Miss—Miss Heather, you will make one man almost too happy for this earth; if you decline it, he will still love and respect you. Now, may I speak?"
He paused, and I had time to observe that he was anxious, and that whatever he wished to say was troubling him; also that he wanted to get it over, that he was desirous to know the worst or the best as quickly as possible. I wondered if he was a relation of Captain Carbury's, and if he was going to speak about him; but I did not think it would be like Captain Carbury to put his own affairs into the hands of anyone else. Still, I had always liked Lord Hawtrey, although quite in a daughterly fashion.