“What a very odd question!” she said, recovering her self-possession. “Certainly I should be so; but I could maintain myself.”
“What would you do?”
“I really cannot say at this moment. Play at concerts perhaps, or teach Latin or Greek to children. I do not see that it can concern anyone except myself.”
His questions, which seemed to her rude and intrusive, had restored her to her natural calmness, though her heart beat a little nervously against the Malmaison roses. The sun was in her eyes and she did not look at him, or she would have understood the expression in his own. He came nearer to her; his head was still uncovered.
“I am afraid I have forgotten my Greek. Will you teach it to me?”
“I really cannot understand you,” she replied, vaguely annoyed and much astonished; if he had been any other man, she would have thought he had taken too much wine at luncheon.
“I must speak more clearly, then,” said Ronald with some embarrassment. “Will you marry me?”
“How can you jest?”
“I should scarcely jest on such a subject,” said Hurstmanceaux. “I mean absolutely what I say. I admire you more than I could tell you. Your memory has haunted me ever since that winter walk in the snow. But I, of course, could have never told you so if your father had lived, or if, he being dead, you had kept his money.”
She was silent; she breathed with difficulty; a tremor shook her from head to foot.