“Listen,” she repeated. “I want to tell you, Arthur Beverley, that supposing anything so altogether impossible and unnatural, and—and absurd and ridiculous as that you, my cousin, almost brother, should have thought of wanting to marry me—me, Alys!—well, supposing such a thing, I want to tell you that nothing you or any one could ever have said or ever could say would make me ever, even for half an instant, take such a thing into consideration. I could not do so. I tell you distinctly that I would not marry you for anything, Arthur, not if my life depended upon it.”
Captain Beverley stared at her—stared as if he hardly believed his own ears.
“Does he think I am going out of my mind?” thought Alys, while across her brain there darted a horrible misgiving—could she in any way have misunderstood Miss Winstanley’s confused replies?—could this impulsive act of hers, instead of being, as it had seemed to her, a positive inspiration, be after all a mistake, a terribly unwomanly mistake, which, to the last day of her life, she would blush to think of? Afterwards it seemed to Alys as if in waiting for her cousin to speak she had lived through years of agonised suspense.
“Alys,” he said at last, hoarsely, it sounded to her. “Alys,” and oh! the relief of the next few words, strangely chosen and almost ludicrously matter-of-fact as they sounded! “Would you mind putting that in writing?”
“Certainly not. I will do so this moment,” she replied, recovering her self-possession and presence of mind on the spot. “Here, give me my writing things—just push my davenport over here.”
Arthur did so, his hands trembling, his face pale with anxiety. All Alys’s nervousness and agitation seemed to have passed to him.
“It is best to do it at once,” he murmured, more as if speaking to himself than to her, “before I am tempted to say anything, so that my conscience may be clear that it is entirely voluntary, entirely her own doing.”
“Yes,” said Alys, looking up from the paper on which she had already traced some lines, “that it certainly is.” Then she went on writing. “There, now, will that do?” she exclaimed, holding the sheet towards him.
“Read it, please,” said Arthur, and Alys read:
“Of my own free will, uninfluenced by any one whatsoever, I wish to declare that no conceivable consideration would, at this or any other time, make me agree to marry my cousin, Arthur Beverley.
“Alys Madelene Cheviott.”