"What's it matter to you?" asked Millie sullenly.
"'S the only thing that does matter to me!" cried Bert desperately. "Look here!" He flung his hat on the table, and stepped in front of her with a sudden manliness which filled Mayne with admiration. "You don' know the sort of home I've got to offer you, Millie. I'm a rich man, as things go round here. I'd give yer pretty well anything you set your heart on. I'd take care of yer—yer shouldn't set them bits of hands to no rough work. I love you, Millie, and well you know it. Let the parson here marry us, an I'll—I'll do anything you want!"
He knelt down by the table as he concluded his appeal, and made a snatch for her hand; but it was sharply withdrawn. He laid his arms down on the rough wood, and hid his face in them, shaken through and through by the intensity of his feelings. Mayne turned away, and walked to the far end of the kitchen. But he heard the girl's short laugh of scorn.
"Tastes differ," she said icily. "I'm an English girl, and if the worst comes to the worst, there's the well in the courtyard. That's better than a drinkin' Boer."
"Millie," said Mayne, in wrath, "I am ashamed of you! Is that the way to answer an honest man, who offers you all he has to give? I am as English as you are, and I beg to say no Englishwoman I ever knew offered insult as a return for honour done her. If you can't feel affection for Bert, surely you could tell him so civilly."
The girl's fragile form quivered with dry sobs; she sprang to her feet.
"Mr. Mestaer, I can't and don't return your affection," she gasped. "I'm brought pretty low, but I've got my pride! I'm thinkin' just now more about funerals than about weddin's, though a black frock for me'll be as hard to fi-f-find as a white one would, I'm thinkin'!"
"There!" cried Bert to Mayne, in hot indignation. "You made her cry now. Millie, my dear, now don't you give it a thought. I didn't know it 'ud vex you! ... Millie!"
But she had staggered blindly down the room, not seeing her way for the streaming tears so long so unnaturally restrained; and as Bert stood hesitating, torn between his pity, his anger, his passion—the door of the kitchen opened slowly, and the new-made widow appeared on the threshold, truly awful in her déshabille.
"A clever girl, I'll warrant!" she cried, in high glee. "Her father not cold yet, and two young men in the kitchen at four o'clock in the morning! Well, what offers, gentlemen? Either of you ready to take her off my hands?"