“You?” He was thunderstruck.
“What alternative do you leave me? You say that I have destroyed my good name. You must provide me with a new one. At all costs I must become an honest woman. Isn’t that the phrase?”
“Don’t!” he cried, and pain quivered in his voice. “Don’t jest upon it.”
“My dear,” she said, and now she held out both hands to him, “why trouble yourself with things of no account, when the only thing that matters to us is within our grasp? We love each other, and—”
Her glance fell away, her lip trembled, and her smile at last took flight. He caught her hands, holding them in a grip that hurt her; he bent his head, and his eyes sought her own, but sought in vain.
“Have you considered—” he was beginning, when she interrupted him. Her face flushed upward, surrendering to that questing glance of his, and its expression was now between tears and laughter.
“You will be for ever considering, Ned. You consider too much, where the issues are plain and simple. For the last time—will you marry me?”
The subtlety he had employed had been greater than he knew, and it had achieved something beyond his utmost hopes.
He murmured incoherently and took her to his arms. I really do not see that he could have done anything else. It was a plain and simple issue, and she herself had protested that the issue was plain and simple.
And then the door opened abruptly and Sir Terence came in. Nor did he discreetly withdraw as a man of feeling should have done before the intimate and touching spectacle that met his eyes. On the contrary, he remained like the infernal marplot that he intended to be.