Roma stopped short. Hitherto she had kept up her rapid pace. She stopped short and turned round so as to face Mr Thurston. He saw that she was very pale.
“Are you in earnest?” she said, very gravely. “Do you mean what you are saying? I do not altogether understand you to-day, Mr Thurston. It would have been more in accordance with my notion of you if, allowing that you are in earnest, you had simply and manfully put the question to the test, instead of first imagining ‘insuperable obstacles’ and then putting them into my mouth. You place me very awkwardly. At this moment I solemnly assure you I do not know if you would like me to say, ‘Mr Thurston, I will marry you if you will ask me,’ or not.”
Notwithstanding her seriousness, with the few last words she had difficulty in repressing a laugh. Gerald’s face flushed deeply, angrily almost, as she spoke, and a quick light came into his eyes—a light, however, not altogether of indignation.
“I would have asked you months, years ago,” he said, “had I not believed that my doing so would have been looked upon as presumption—would have put an end to the friendship I have learnt to value more than anything in my life, and which I could ill afford to lose. So hopeless, till this instant, have I been of ever obtaining more.”
“Why?” asked Roma.
“Why?” he repeated. “For the reason I have already told you, and for another. Think of my position! A struggling engineer—an artisan, some of your people would call me, I daresay; for I am not yet at the top of my tree by any means, nor likely to be so for many a long day to come. The only home I can offer my wife is an unattractive one enough—you know what sort of a place Wareborough is—is that the home you are suited to? You, beautiful, courted, admired; spoilt by every sort of rule you should be, but I don’t think you are. I am not exactly poor, certainly, but I am not rich, and there is hard work before me for years to come. There now, Miss Eyrecourt, you know the whole. I have great reason to be sanguine of success, have I not?”
“And this is all?” she said. “You have told me every one of the ‘insuperable obstacles?’”
“Every one,” he replied. “Don’t torture me, Roma.”
She held out both her hands; she lifted up her beautiful face and looked at him with tears in her large soft dark eyes. “Oh, Gerald,” she said at last, when the two hands were pressed closely in his, when she felt his gaze of almost incredulous joy fixed upon her with eager questioning; “Oh, Gerald, how could you mistake me so? ‘Spoilt,’ am I? Ah no, or if so, not by the excess of love that has been lavished on me. I have been very lonely; it is years and years since I have known what it was to have a home—a real home. Even had I not loved you, I confess to you the temptation of your love, your strength and protection, would have been great to me. You don’t know what to me would have been the mere thought of having some one I could perfectly trust. But as it is, I needn’t think of temptation. I love you, Gerald. I would rather have your ‘poor battered old heart’ than anything in the universe. And if this makes amends for the dilapidated state of yours, I can assure you that mine, such as it is, is quite whole. I give it to you entirely, without the slightest little chip or crack.”
She had begun to speak with the tears in her eyes; as she went on, notwithstanding her half-joking tone, they dropped—one, two, three big tears. She pulled away one hand to dash them aside, but Gerald caught it, kissed it tenderly and gratefully, and held it fast again.