"Perhaps not; but I can, and shall. Listen, you difficult old fellow, and set your mind and your conscience at rest. Before that great and good Being, who has spared you through this death-sickness, and has spared me, perhaps, a life of unhappiness, I solemnly swear that I will not marry you! I don't think I have much pride, but I've some; and I am above stooping to accept a man that all the world knows hates me like poison. I'd not have you now, Travice, though there were no Lucy Arkell in the world. A pretty figure I should cut on our wedding day, if I did hold you to your bargain! The town might follow us to church with a serenade of marrowbones and cleavers, as they do the butchers. I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end between us—on your side as on mine."
"It is not right, Barbara. It is not right that I should treat you so."
"I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end."
"I can't tell it you."
"I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end," she persistently repeated. "No, not if I have to stop in the room all the blessed night, as your real sister might. What do I care for their fads and their punctilios? Here I'll stop."
He looked up in her face with a smile. It had more of love in it than Barbara had ever seen expressed to her from him. She bent down and kissed his lips.
"There! that's an earnest of our new friendship. Not that I shall be giving you kisses in future, or expect any from you. Lucy might not like it, you know, or you either. I don't say I should, for I may be marrying on my own score. We might have been an estranged man and wife, Travice, wishing each other dead and buried and perhaps not gone to heaven, every day of our lives. We will be two firm friends. You don't reject me, you know; I reject you, and you can't help yourself."
"We will be friends always, Barbara," he said, from the depths of his inmost heart, as he held her warm hand on his breast. "I am beginning to love you as one already."
"There's a darling fellow! Yes, I should call you so though Lucy were present. Oh, Travice! it's best as it is! A little bit of smart to get over—and that's what I have been doing the past week or so—and we begin on a truer basis. I never was suited to you, and that's the truth. But we can be the best friends living. It won't spoil my appetite, Travice; I'm not of that flimsy temperament. Fancy me getting brain-fever through being crossed in love!"
She laughed out loud at the thought—a ringing, merry laugh. It put Travice at ease on the score of the "smart."