“I don’t think they will mind; they will only be surprised.”
I did not think Mr. Gascoyne would be at all annoyed, but I had a sort of idea that Mrs. Gascoyne would not be pleased.
“Shall we tell them?”
I knew that she was a woman who would demand courage from the man she loved even in little things.
“Why not?” I said.
So we walked into the drawing-room, and I said boldly: “Edith has promised to be my wife.”
Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne, awaked from their after-dinner slumber, gazed at us in astonishment.
Mrs. Gascoyne’s face said as plainly as words could have done, ‘What, refuse Mr. Hibbert-Wyllie, and accept Israel Rank; why, what are you thinking of?’
Mr. Gascoyne looked from one to the other several times before he spoke, saying finally, as he took her hands in his: “My dear, if I had thought of it at all I should have thought that you were the woman to prefer love and the approval of your own conscience to rank and wealth.”
Mrs. Gascoyne, woman-like, could not forgive an event of the heart which she had not foreseen.