I looked at him, beginning to get red all over. It commenced to dawn upon me what he meant. I had not supposed that he was a master of such roundabout ways.
“I quite fail to understand you, Mr Morgan.”
“Is it not plain that, if you are really sorry for me, you will be my wife? And then I can assure you, from the bottom of my heart, that I shall be the happiest of men.”
Such insidious methods of arriving at entirely erroneous conclusions I was unaccustomed to. It was becoming momentarily plain to me that I had not known Mr Benjamin Morgan so well as I imagined. I had supposed that he was an artless sort of person; and now it almost began to appear that he was a regular Jesuit.
“I do wish, Mr Morgan, that you would not talk nonsense. I am not feeling very well, and I can assure you that I am in anything but a mood for frivolity.”
“Then our moods are in sympathy. You surely do not suggest that to ask you to be my wife is to be frivolous. It is to me the most important question that ever yet was asked. The expression of your sympathy emboldens me to put it again.—Norah, please say that you will be my wife.”
He raised his hand, and with the tips of his fingers touched my arm—out there in the Broad Walk, before all the people. Something seemed, all at once, to go right through me;—whether it was the sudden surprise of his touch, or the strangeness of his tone, I could not say. But for the moment I felt almost inclined to cry—and to do something much worse. For one dreadful second I was almost on the verge of making a perfect idiot of myself. It is frightful to think of such a thing being possible, but I am nearly disposed to believe that if we had been alone, and there had been nothing to divert my attention, I might have done. But just at that second I saw Lena Portch coming towards us with Mr Champneys, and the smile which she gave made me frantic. She is Lilian’s particular friend, and quite as fond of chaffing me about “Crooked Ben” as any of them. I could not but suspect that there might be something a little peculiar about our attitude, and the way we were behaving to one another. The idea that I should allow him to make a public spectacle of me, and furnish Lena with a first-rate tale for Lilian, was unendurable. I became all at once so angry—so stupidly angry!—that I forgot my manners altogether, not to speak of any fragments of common decency which I may suppose myself to possess, and behaved myself like the absolute little wretch which at heart I am.
“Thank you. I am obliged to you for your offer, Mr Morgan. But I do not care to marry just at present; and, when I do marry, I intend to marry a man.”
No one need tell me that it was a perfectly disgraceful thing to say. No one could have been better aware of it than I was. I could have bitten my own tongue off for having said it the very moment afterwards: I never should have said it at all if it had not been for the horrid smile I saw on Lena’s face, and my instant perception of the sort of yarn she would make all possible haste to spin. I know that that is not the least excuse; but it is all the excuse I have to offer,—I could cry at the mere thought of it even now.
Lena and Mr Champneys passed on. Mr Morgan was still. He just looked at me once,—a startled, dreadful sort of look; and then he looked away, walking on by my side in silence. I seemed somehow to have caught a sudden chill. I was shivering all over,—I could have beaten myself with pleasure. How long the silence lasted, or how far we walked before we spoke again, I have not the faintest notion. But I know that at last he stood still, and turned, and looked at me,—and there was something in his look which seemed to make my heart go cold as ice. He said—there was a quiver in his voice which made me flinch as if he had struck me with a whip,—