A cunning look came into her eyes when he mentioned marriage, and for the first time she recovered a little of her direction, which she had lost in her floundering to and fro.
“Ah, so you think he ought to marry me? Well, so do I,” she said. “You’d think ill of a man who could let a girl go down and her child be nameless save for the name of a woman, which isn’t a name at all?”
“Yes, yes,” said Lovel, fretting to be at an end.
“Supposing I told you,” she proceeded, slowly now and with caution, “that he couldn’t marry? wasn’t fit to marry?”
“Not fit to marry? if he’s fit to be the father of your child he’s surely fit enough to marry,” said Lovel.
“Well, but there might be other reasons,—ill-health, mightn’t there? or he might be married already, let’s say....”
“In any case, it doesn’t concern me. I’m sorry,” said Lovel, “but you’re talking to me of things you’d better be talking of to another man.”
“Are you so sure of that?” she asked, coming up to him and putting her hand on the neck of his horse. She was aware that her eyes must be all puffy and blubbered after her recent crying, but the crisis being at hand now, for good or for bad, she was not going to delay it until another occasion when she should have had a better chance of setting herself to rights. “Are you so sure of that?” she asked, in a tone she tried to make impressive.
“Sure?” echoed Lovel, looking at her in disgust at the implication that he himself could ever have touched her. He even gathered up his reins as a sign that he definitely wanted her to release him now.
“Not so fast,” she said again. “There’s such a thing as responsibility for other’s actions, whether you like it or no. And it’s a responsibility I’m not in a position to let you off. I have to think of my baby as well as of myself, you see, and so long as he gets the name of Lovel I’m willing to overlook him not getting it from the proper quarter. Though why I talk of my baby as he, I’m sure I don’t know,” she added with a giggle, “for it’s even chances it’ll be a girl.”