"Not beyond mentioning your name and your services to her father, I think," he answered.
"She never mentioned, I suppose, that I ... I was anxious ... I proposed to marry her?"
"No; certainly not. I never heard it," returned Everest promptly and emphatically.
A wave of hot emotion, he could not tell exactly of what kind, but certainly surprise and anger mixed in it, came over him as he heard another man speak of Regina, and reveal his attitude towards her, speak of marriage with her! She was his ... his ... his.... How dare the curate talk of her!... She was wholly Everest's, his own property. She belonged solely, utterly to him, and then the memory came: he was going to leave her, he was going away, he was leaving her to herself, to Stossop, to the people here, to this ... curate!
In a whirl of anger he heard the next words:
"She refused me," uttered the young man faintly. "You see," he continued, "she is so very young, I think perhaps she hardly knows her own mind, and I, of course, have no chance of being very much with her or pleading my cause. I thought it was just possible, since you are with her so much, you could put in a word for me. A girl is so much influenced sometimes by what an older man says. He has the weight of a father, and yet more than the influence of a father, because he comes from the outside. He's a stranger. Regina would listen, I think, to all you said.... I want her to consider things a little, to consider how lonely a woman's life is, unmarried...."
The curate's voice went on, but Everest lost what he was saying in the angry maze and swirl of his own thoughts.
So this was what he was driving at! It was not flannel clubs, nor coal tickets, nor choir classes now; it was not subscriptions this time. He was being asked to persuade Regina—his Regina—to marry another man, this man—this limited, narrow-minded, microscopic curate!
Then he became aware that the man was talking of Regina herself, telling him how wonderful she was, so unlike the other sisters, so unlike anyone he had ever known, and drawn on by Everest's quiet, apparently sympathetic attention he began to dilate on his own love for her, his ardent desire for her happiness.