“Ah, that is just a girl’s fancy, fed by old-fashioned poets—Byron, for instance. The Italy of to-day is very disappointing, and just like everywhere else.”
“Oh, Mr. Vansittart!”
“Mr.!” he echoed. “Henceforward I am John, or Jack; very soon, my husband. Never again Mr., except in your letters to tradespeople or your orders to servants.”
“Am I really to call you Jack?”
“Really. It is the name by which I best know myself. But if you think it is too vulgar——”
“Vulgar; it is a lovely name. Jack! Jack!”
She repeated the monosyllable as if it were a sound of exquisite music, a sound on which to dwell lingeringly and lovingly for its very sweetness. To Vansittart also the name was sweet, spoken by those lips.
Colonel Marchant received Mr. Vansittart’s offer for his eldest daughter politely, but with no excess of cordiality. He had set his hope upon a richer marriage, had encouraged Sefton’s visit to the Homestead, with the idea that he would eventually propose to Eve. He might not mean matrimony in the first instance, perhaps, though he obviously admired the young lady, but he would be led on and caught before he was aware. Colonel Marchant had implicit faith in his daughter’s power to ward off any evil purpose of her admirer; and although he knew Sefton’s character well enough to know that he would not willingly marry a penniless girl, he trusted to the power of Eve’s beauty and personal charm to bring him to the right frame of mind.
He was too shrewd a campaigner, however, to refuse the humble sparrow in the hand for the goldfinch in the bush. Sefton had been dangling about the family for nearly two years, and had scrupulously abstained from any serious declaration; and here was a young man of good birth and breeding, with a very fair estate, who between January and April had made up his mind in the manliest fashion, and was willing to take Eve for his wife without a sixpence, and to settle three hundred a year upon her for pin-money. Vansittart had offered himself in a frank and business-like manner, had declared the amount of his income, and his anxiety to marry as soon as possible.