“Allow you, Elfie!” said Knight, putting his arm round her and drawing her closer. “I am twice as happy with you by my side. Yes: we will stay, and watch the approach of day.”
So they again sought out the sheltered nook, and sitting down wrapped themselves in the rug as before.
“What were you going to ask me?” he inquired, as they undulated up and down.
“Oh, it was not much—perhaps a thing I ought not to ask,” she said hesitatingly. Her sudden wish had really been to discover at once whether he had ever before been engaged to be married. If he had, she would make that a ground for telling him a little of her conduct with Stephen. Mrs. Jethway’s seeming words had so depressed the girl that she herself now painted her flight in the darkest colours, and longed to ease her burdened mind by an instant confession. If Knight had ever been imprudent himself, he might, she hoped, forgive all.
“I wanted to ask you,” she went on, “if—you had ever been engaged before.” She added tremulously, “I hope you have—I mean, I don’t mind at all if you have.”
“No, I never was,” Knight instantly and heartily replied. “Elfride”—and there was a certain happy pride in his tone—“I am twelve years older than you, and I have been about the world, and, in a way, into society, and you have not. And yet I am not so unfit for you as strict-thinking people might imagine, who would assume the difference in age to signify most surely an equal addition to my practice in love-making.”
Elfride shivered.
“You are cold—is the wind too much for you?”
“No,” she said gloomily. The belief which had been her sheet-anchor in hoping for forgiveness had proved false. This account of the exceptional nature of his experience, a matter which would have set her rejoicing two years ago, chilled her now like a frost.
“You don’t mind my asking you?” she continued.