“I wish to hear nothing, from any one, Mr. Wradisley, which she cannot hear.”
“Not if I implored for one moment?”
His eyes, which were dull by nature, had become hot and shining, his colorless face was flushed; he was so reticent, so calm, that the swelling of something new within him took a form that was alarming. He turned round his hat in his hands as if it were some mystic implement of fate. She hesitated, and cast a glance round her at all the comfort of the little room, as if her shelter had suddenly been endangered, and the walls of her house were going to fall about her ears. Tiny all the time was very busy with her doll. She had arranged its nightgown, settled every button, tied every string, and now, holding it against her little bosom, singing to it, got up to put it to bed. “Mammy’s darling,” said Tiny, “everything as mammy has—dood dolly, dood dolly. Dolly go to bed.”
Both the man and the woman sat watching her as she performed this little ceremony. Dolly’s bed was on a sofa, carefully arranged with a cushion and coverlet. Tiny laid the doll down, listened, made as if she heard a little cry, bent over the mimic baby, soothing and quieting. Then she turned round to the spectators, holding up a little finger. “Gone to sleep,” said Tiny in a whisper. “Hush, hush—dolly not well, not twite well—me go and ask nursie what she sinks.”
The child went out on tip-toe, making urgent little gesticulations that the others might keep silence. There was a momentary hush; she had left the door ajar, but Mr. Wradisley did not think of that. He looked with a nervous glance at the doll on the sofa, which seemed to him like another child laid there to watch.
“Mrs. Nugent,” he said at last, “you must know what I mean. I never thought this great moment of my life would come thus, as if it were a boy’s secret, to be kept from a child!—but you know; I have tried to make it very clear. You are the only woman in the world—I want you to be my wife.”
“Mr. Wradisley—God help me—I have tried to make another thing still more clear, that I can never more be any one’s wife.”
She clasped her hands and looked at him as if it were she who was the supplicant.
He, having delivered himself, became more calm; he regained his confidence in himself.
“I am very much in earnest,” he said; “don’t think it is lightly said. I have known since the first moment I saw you, but I have not yielded to any impulse. It has grown into my whole being; I accept Tiny and everything. I don’t offer you any other inducements, for you are above them. You know a little what I am, but I will change my very nature to please you. Be my wife.”