“Oh! now, don’t say no before you think it over!” entreated the young man. “I know you’re ten times too good for me; but, for that matter, you’re too good for the best fellow that ever lived. I said so myself to Sir Simon only this morning. But I do love you with all my heart, Franceline; and if only you could care for me ever so little to begin with, I’d be satisfied, and you’d make me the happiest man alive!”
Franceline had now recovered her self-possession, and was able to speak, though she still trembled.
“I am so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I never dreamed of this; indeed I did not! I dare say I have been very selfish, very thoughtless; but it was not wilful. I am very unhappy to have given you pain!”
“Oh! don’t say that. You’ll make me miserable if you say that!” pleaded Ponsonby. “Of course you never thought of it. It’s great impudence of me to think of it, I have so little to offer you! But if you don’t quite hate the sight of me, I’m sure I could make you a devoted husband, and love you better than many a cleverer fellow. I’ve been fond of you from the first, and so has my mother.”
“You are both very good to me; I am very, very grateful!” The tears rose to her eyes, and with a frank, impulsive movement she held out her hand to him. Ponsonby bent from the saddle and raised it to his lips, although it was gloved. If he had not been over-sanguine at heart and a trifle stupid, poor fellow, he would have felt that it was all over with him. The little hand lay with cold, sisterly kindness in his grasp, and Franceline looked at him with eyes that were too kind and pitying to promise anything more than sisterly pity and gratitude.
“I cannot, I cannot. You must never think of it any more. Do you not see that it is impossible? I am a Catholic!”
“Pshaw! as if that mattered a whit! I mean as if it need make any difference between us! I don’t mind it a pin—’pon my honor I don’t! I said so to the count. We’ve settled all that, in fact, and if he’s satisfied to trust me why will not you?”
“Then you have spoken to my father?”
“Oh! yes; that was the right thing, Sir Simon told me, as he was a Frenchman.”
“And what did he say to you?”