‘I say, Alma, how long is this to last?’ he demanded not without asperity.
‘What, pray?’
‘Our perpetual misunderstandings. I declare if I did not know what a queer girl you are, I should think you detested me!’
‘I like you well enough, George,—when you are agreeable, which is not so often as I could wish.’
Thus she answered, with a somewhat weary laugh.
‘But you know I like you better than anything in the world!’ he cried eagerly. ‘You know I have set my heart on making you my wife.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, George!’ replied Alma. ‘Love between cousins is an absurdity.’
She would have added an ‘enormity,’ having during her vagrant studies imbibed strong views on the subject of consanguinity, but, advanced as she was, she was not quite advanced enough to discuss a physiological and social problem with the man who wanted to marry her. In simple truth, she had the strongest personal objection to her cousin, in his present character of lover.
‘I don’t see the absurdity of it,’ answered the young man, ‘nor does my father. His heart is set upon this match, as you know; and besides, he does not at all approve of your living the life you do—alone, without a protector, and all that sort of thing.’
By this time Alma had quite recovered herself, and was able to reassume the air of sweet superiority which is at once so bewitching in a pretty woman, or so irritating. It did not bewitch George Craik; it irritated him beyond measure. A not inconsiderable experience of vulgar amours in the country, not to speak of the business known as sowing wild oats’ in Paris and London, had familiarised him with a different type of woman. In his cousin’s presence he felt, not abashed, but at a disadvantage. She had a manner, too, of talking down to him, as to a younger brother, which he disliked exceedingly; and more than once, when he had talked to her in the language of love, he had smarted under her ridicule.