There is no woman living who is not somewhat shaken by a proposal of marriage. It is a peremptory challenge, which forces her, for the moment at least, to consider a certain man not as one of a class,—as a member of the conventional, calling, smiling, chaffing circle,—but as an individual, passing suddenly from all this surface trifling to a life and death reality—saying as Jonathan Flint had said this night: "Give me [Pg 266] all or nothing. I will have no half loaves. Let us have an end of pretences and evasions. For once at least you shall listen, and be told the truth flowing at lava heat out of a man's heart." It was by no means a new experience to Winifred Anstice. As a younger girl, although no coquette, she had found a certain charm of romance in finding herself the heroine of a love-affair in real life; but as she grew older she felt more and more shrinking from such sentimental crises, and a more and more genuine regret as she saw the candid comradeship of one friendship after another sacrificed to the absorbing egotism of passion.
One by one she had let these lovers slip out of her life, and acknowledged to herself that it was better so; but when it came to Jonathan Flint, she had found herself impelled to the impetuous protest for which she already half blamed herself in her heart. But in self-exculpation she argued with the embers, which seemed to wink at her from the hearth, that there were more considerations than one in the matter; that as she had told Mr. Flint, modern life was too complex to be compressed into a "Yes" or "No."
As she was pondering, her eyes fell upon the portrait,—Ruth's portrait, hanging there over the mantel.
"I wish you were here, Grandmamma," Winifred exclaimed, looking up at it, "to help me clear up the muddle in my mind! I have a kind of feeling that you would understand."
The girl's sentimental musings were rudely interrupted by a race between Jimmy and Paddy, who came rushing through the room, regardless of tea-tables or rugs.
"Jump for it, Paddy!" cried Jim, snatching a piece of cake from the tray, and holding it high in air.
"Don't, Jimmy! You will upset the table."
"Come on then, Paddy, we'll jump in the hall, where there is no girl to be nervous—I hate nervous people."
"Whose cane is that, McGregor?" he asked, as he saw an unfamiliar walking-stick on the hall table.