“And you want me to break this to Colonel Lane?” he answered.
“Oh, no! no! no!” she repeated. “I want you to pacify him, if he finds out.”
“But surely you are not going to keep this a secret?” he asked reprovingly.
“I am,” she answered, “if I can.”
“But why?”
“Because the old uncle (or aunt) of Charlie may die at any time, and he is to have all the money; and it was chiefly because Charlie had only his pay that father objected. He won’t make half the fuss if Charlie has that money. But if father finds out, promise me to take my part.”
Barrimore could do no less than give the promise, though he disliked the idea exceedingly.
He blamed Captain Arbuthnot most, but he could not consider Phyllis blameless. Surely some other way could have been found by the lovers out of their difficulty, considering the self-sacrificing devotion of the old Colonel, who had been both father and mother to his child since his wife’s death.
“I will be your advocate, Phyllis,” Barrimore told her reluctantly. “But you must not suppose that I approve of this business, and I consider that you ought to tell your father at once. I think it was not worthy of a gentleman and a soldier to have proposed a clandestine marriage to you.”
“But Charlie didn’t propose it,” announced Phyllis. “It was I who did that. I told him I would be married to him before he went away, and I told you that father wouldn’t allow even an engagement. Father said that I might be twenty-one, but that I was a child, all the same, and that I should change my mind, and that I must not be bound. But I knew all the time that it was money he was thinking of, so I begged and prayed of Charlie to marry me and make sure, and I told him father would come around all right after. And, you know, Charlie is most awfully fond of me, and I can turn him round my finger. But he didn’t like marrying that way. He didn’t think it straightforward, which is nonsense; for all’s fair in love and war. So I told him if he didn’t get the license and marry me at St. Clement’s before breakfast, I would never marry him at all. That did it.”