They were walking down the slope of the bank towards the Clyde, under trees now bare with the surly winds of winter. It was a dull November afternoon, and everything was done in tints of grey; the skies in long bands, here darker, there lighter, as the vapours were more or less heavy, the opposite shore a tinge more solid than the long weltering line of the water which had the ghost of a reflection in it, the points standing out like black specks upon the grey, the wreaths of smoke half-suspended in the still air over the town of Clydeside, putting in an intermediate tone between the two. The edge of the great stream grew a little lighter as it crept to their feet over the shallows, and broke on the beach with a faint white line of foam.
“I will always maintain,” said Eddy, “that there never were two people so fit to go together as you and I. We haven’t any wild admiration of each other; we know each other’s deficiencies exactly; we don’t go in for perfection, do we? But we suit, my little May, we suit down to the ground. You would know what you had to expect in me, and I could keep you in order.”
“You are just very impudent,” she said. “I never gave you any encouragement, Mr. Saumarez, to think that I was willing to be—to do—I mean anything of that kind.”
“Ah, Marion,” he said, “you may be as stern as you like, but I know I would suit you better than that duke. You would get dreadfully tired of being called your grace, and having him, a stupid fellow, always stuck there opposite to you; but you would not get tired of me.”
“How do you know that? I am often just very tired of you,” said Marion. “You think too much of yourself. We would not agree, not for two days without a fight.”
“That is just what I say. There would be no gêne between us, we know each other so well. Don’t you think, after all, you would perhaps wait for me, Marion, supposing the duke did not come? I never could pretend to stand against him. Say you will, and I’ll do what your father says, and go ranching: though most likely I shall break my neck the first year, and then you will be free of your promise, May.”
“Why should you go ranching, as you call it, and what does it mean?”
“That’s what I don’t know. It means riding about after cows, but why I can’t tell you. I know nothing in the world about cows. I scarcely know one when I see it, but your father thinks it’s the right thing. I’ll go if you’ll wait for me, May.”
“And what would you do, Eddy,” she said, stealing a little closer to him, “if you didn’t go?”
“That’s more than I can tell you. But I’ll tell you what I’d do, May, if old aunt Sarah would only die. I’d settle with the governor about Gilston, and we’d furbish it up and live there. In the spring we’d have a little turn in town, and in winter we’d hunt, and have the house full. We should be as jolly as the day’s long, and nobody to interfere with us. And I promise you, you’d go out of the room before Mrs. James Rowland, though he is the great railway man. I could do that for you, Marion, though I couldn’t make you Her Grace, you know.”