“Not likely. She didn’t engage me, and therefore has no standing in the contract. But, to return to ourselves, which is always the paramount subject of interest, this dread secret, as you called it, puts an entirely different complexion on our relations. You must see that. Here have I been suing you under the impression that you were a helpless dependent. Now you turn out to be an heiress of the most pronounced transatlantic type. You once accused me of being dull in comprehension.”
“I never did.”
“Well, people do accuse me of that; nevertheless I am brilliant enough to perceive that this is a transformation scene, and that the dreams which I have indulged in regarding our relationship are no longer feasible.”
Hilda clasped her hands and rested her elbows on the wicker table, leaning forward toward me with an expression half quizzical, half pathetic.
“I never called you dull, Mr. Tremorne——”
“Rupert, if you please.”
“——but I did think you slightly original, Rupertus. Now, your talk of all this making a great difference is quite along the line of conventional melodrama. I see you are about to wave me aside. ‘Rich woman, begone,’ say you. You are going out into the world, registering a vow that until you can place dollar for dollar on the marriage altar you will shun me. Now I have read that sort of thing ever since I perused ‘The Romance of a Poor Young Man,’ but I never expected to encounter in real life this haughty, inflexible, poor young man.”
“Rich woman, there are many surprises here below, and of course you cannot avoid your share of them. However, I shall not so haughtily wave you aside until you have answered that important question with a word of three letters rather than one of two. I cannot refuse what is not proffered. So will you kindly put me in a position to enact a haughty poor young man by saying definitely whether you will marry me or not?”
“I reply, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,’ and a thousand other yes’s, if you wish them. Now, young man, what have you to say?”