“Then marry me at once, and let us go away together to live in another place.”
He stared at her, stunned, incredulous. Of all the wild, impossible requests this was the last which he had expected. He could hardly believe that he had heard aright.
“Marry you? Teresa! You can’t mean it. When you know that I love—”
She held up a warning hand.
“I thought she was not to be mentioned! Yes! I do mean it, Dane. It’s the best thing for you, as well as for me. Can’t you see that it’s the best thing?”
“I see that it’s impossible. Excuse me, if I’m brutal. If you could do it, I couldn’t. I should be wretched. I should make you wretched.”
“You weren’t wretched when we were first engaged! You chose me, and you were satisfied, until this happened. If we were far away in a new place, you would be satisfied again—I could make you satisfied.—I... I don’t say—” the even voice quavered over the admission—“that it would be the same. It can never be the same for either of us, it would be better than nothing. We would find a little home, and make it pretty. You would be interested in the land. There’d be the shooting, and you could keep a horse, and hunt. We’d grow all our own fruit and vegetables. There would be neighbours... They would ask us out, and we could give little parties in return. Quite cheaply. There would be quite a lot of things to interest you, and fill up the time. And... there might be children!”
These last words came with a gasp, rendered additionally touching by the effort which they entailed. Teresa did not approve of such allusions, and did violence to her own feelings in giving them utterance. It was only the desperation of her need which made her daring. Her chin quivered with a childlike helplessness, and Dane looking on felt a pang of tenderness and remorse.
“You poor little girl! You dear little girl! You are too kind to me. I don’t deserve it, but I’ll be grateful to you all my life. I’ll never forget you, but, I can’t do it, dear—I can’t! Try to understand. Put yourself in my place... I’m in love.”
“But it’s no use,” Teresa repeated stolidly. “It’s no use.” She was fighting doggedly with her back to the wall, fighting for love, and for something only less precious than love, the preservation of her own position among her neighbours. In the estimation of the village Teresa Mallison was a social success. Lady Cassandra had “taken her up,” and while other girls hung on season after season without sign of an admirer, Teresa at twenty-two had become engaged to the most eligible bachelor of the neighbourhood. At the present moment she had reached the zenith of her success, and was actually visiting “in the county.” Only those who have had their habitation in country towns can realise the devastating burden of public opinion. In the first bitterness of disappointed love, Teresa could still think with a shudder of what “they” would say; could imagine eyes peering from behind short blinds, hear the jangle of the bell announcing callers, sympathetically curious, and full of commiseration for the “Poor Dear!...” It was torture to Teresa to think of becoming a Poor Dear!