‘Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn’t I naturally desirous of seeing you and Edward once more after a year’s absence?’
Marian coughed a little dry cough. ‘Friendship is a very powerfully attractive magnet, isn’t it, Edward?’ she said with an arch smile to her husband. ‘It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me, dear—now, wasn’t it?’
‘So very good,’ Edward answered, laughing, ‘that I should almost be inclined myself (as a lawyer) to suspect some other underlying motive.’
‘Well, she is a very dear little girl,’ Marian went on reflectively.
‘She is, certainly,’ her husband echoed.
Harry laughed. ‘I see you’ve found me out,’ he answered, not altogether unpleased. ‘Well, yes, I may as well make a clean breast of it, Mrs Hawthorn. I’ve come across on purpose to ask her; and I won’t go back either, till I can take her with me. I’ve waited for twelve months, to make quite sure I knew my own heart and wasn’t mistaken about it. Every day, her image has remained there clearer and clearer than before, and I will win her, or else stop here for ever.’
‘When a man says that and really means it,’ Marian replied encouragingly, ‘I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has set his heart upon.’
‘But I suppose you know,’ Edward interrupted, ‘that her father has already made up his mind that she’s to marry a cousin of hers at Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact publicly to half Trinidad?’
‘Not Mr Tom Dupuy?’ Harry cried in amazement.
‘Yes, Tom Dupuy—the very man. Then you’ve met him already?’