Edward had by this time turned away from her—she looked upon the action as typical—and was directing a grave question to the scarlet Toby.
“You have not yet told your people?”
“Why should I? I am absolutely independent of my father. I owe none of them anything after the way in which they behaved to her.”
The red god of war spoke through his sullen voice, and Miss Ransome saw and grasped her opportunity.
“Whatever else happens to me, do not let me be a cause of quarrel between you and yours,” she said angelically. “If I thought I was going to be a firebrand I would run away and hide myself somewhere where no one would find me.”
Then she pulled herself up. “I must not be melodramatic, he would see through it in a moment.” The he did not refer to her future husband. Her inspiration took a wiser form. Going up to her fiancé, and laying her hand on his shoulder, she said with a calculated impulsiveness that had yet the curious one grain of truth in it which her lies, spoken and acted, so often held—
“Ask them just to tolerate me. I do not expect them to like me. Poor things, it would be too much to hope”—the corners of her mouth twitching with irresistible, if rather nervous, and happily not evident mirth at the picture that rose before her quick brain, of the imminent announcement and its effect—“but if they would give me just a chance! Every one has a right to ask to be given a chance.”
Of the two pairs of eyes towards which her own rolled in a lovely candour of appeal, one met her glance with a besotted ecstasy of approbation. The other pair fell. Oh, if she could only get Toby out of the room, out of the house! Her situation between the two men was fast becoming intolerable to her. If only Toby was out of sight and hearing, she could manage Edward so far better. And the contrast between their appearances was getting on her nerves.
“Go,” she said with a charming air of self-denying insistence, “go at once. I can’t bear you to delay a moment. Whatever they may have done to me—and indeed, indeed you exaggerate—your first duty must always be to them.”
Metaphorically she pushed him out, entirely ignoring his distressed signals to her to accompany him to the hall door, on the very off-chance of snatching a moment of that privacy which was the last thing she desired. Her manœuvre did not at first seem to have achieved a particularly pleasant result.