That time she did blush. Ralph could have sworn it!
How he reached home he never knew. The biggest men are the largest fools sometimes. His enormous heart drew its own pattern of her perfections, and coloured it with her beauty round and about. Her reflections of him never extended beyond the locality of her brain. He did not look half smart out of uniform—was awkward as ever, but kind-hearted, and her baby liked him! If it were ill, he would be the person to send for. But Phœbe must be taught not to chatter! Had it been anyone else but Dot——!
Danby's coachman, when not cogitating on the off-chances suggested by "straight tips" from stablemen in the mews, used to puzzle himself in the days which followed at the frequency of the doctor's visits to the tiny house in Maida Vale. He became conversant with the pattern of the window curtains, and began to cultivate a lively interest in the headgear of the "superior young person" who wheeled Miss Cameron's go-cart. As a reward of his attentions, the "superior young person," whose encyclopædic qualities were unbounded, certified to a fact he had long suspected, that there was absolutely no sickness in the establishment!
But Ralph Danby was happily unconscious of the delicate supervision of man and maid, and pursued the even tenor of his way in a delightful state of beatitude till one day he overstepped the bounds of public thoroughfare and found himself face to face with a warning to trespassers. In fact, he made an ass of himself and proposed.
Without rhyme or reason he placed his six-foot-three of cumbersome manhood at the disposal of a woman from whom he afterwards confessed he had never received the smallest encouragement. She had certainly never objected to his continual presence, but, to those who have known each other in a garrison town where daily meetings and calls are common, visits are not noted with the same importance as metropolitan formalities of like description.
Mrs Cameron had not yet returned to society, and consequently cultivated few acquaintances. Her intimates called as frequently as Ralph, whose arrival was never objectless. Sometimes there was a doll to be delivered to Phœbe minor; occasionally he produced tickets for some lecture on infancy or education; now and then he brought music which he especially wished to hear (he could recognise "God Save the Queen" if played at the end of a programme); and once he had ventured to offer flowers! But the quick march came to an abrupt halt through his own folly. Because one morning he found her with a complexion more like a rose petal than usual, because the birds made a perfect din of song outside, and the spring sun seemed to pour through every crack and cranny and say, "Winter is past," he thought her heart must be as love-flushed as his own. Always downright—blunt some people said—he invaded where angels might have feared to tread.
"Mrs Cameron—Phœbe—I love you. Will you marry me? Will you let me make you happy again?"
Two dove-grey eyes blinked wide with amazement; then, seeing the reality of his emotion, she stepped back a pace, and seemed to freeze as she stood.
The birds sounded discordantly; the sunshine lost all its warmth—it was but a winter gleam after all; the rose-bloom of her cheek changed to deadly pallor. Big man as he was, he grew giddy as he looked. He knew at once the magnitude of his vanity and his mistake, and cursed himself for having spoken.
"Doctor Danby, I—I—you do me honour. I thank you very much, but oh! why did you spoil our friendship with such folly?"