“Could you live with me in a cottage in the country, with a nice garden, and one little maid to wait on us, and two or three new dresses in a year?”
Regina lifted her fine eyes in sober ecstasy to the sky. “It sounds very tempting,” she remarked, in the sweetest tones of her voice.
“And it could all be done,” Amelius proceeded, “on five hundred a year.”
“Could it, dear?”
“I have calculated it—allowing the necessary margin—and I am sure of what I say. And I have done something else; I have asked about the Marriage License. I can easily find lodgings in the neighbourhood. We might be married at Harrow in a fortnight.”
Regina started: her eyes opened widely, and rested on Amelius with an expression of incredulous wonder. “Married in a fortnight?” she repeated. “What would my uncle and aunt say?”
“My angel, our happiness doesn’t depend on your uncle and aunt—our happiness depends on ourselves. Nobody has any power to control us. I am a man, and you are a woman; and we have a right to be married whenever we like.” Amelius pronounced this last oracular sentence with his head held high, and a pleasant inner persuasion of the convincing manner in which he had stated his case.
“Without my uncle to give me away!” Regina exclaimed. “Without my aunt! With no bridesmaids, and no friends, and no wedding-breakfast! Oh, Amelius, what can you be thinking of?” She drew back a step, and looked at him in helpless consternation.
For the moment, and the moment only, Amelius lost all patience with her. “If you really loved me,” he said bitterly, “you wouldn’t think of the bridesmaids and the breakfast!” Regina had her answer ready in her pocket—she took out her handkerchief. Before she could lift it to her eyes, Amelius recovered himself. “No, no,” he said, “I didn’t mean that—I am sure you love me—take my arm again. Do you know, Regina, I doubt whether your uncle has told you everything that passed between us. Are you really aware of the hard terms that he insists on? He expects me to increase my five hundred a year to two thousand, before he will sanction our marriage.”
“Yes, dear, he told me that.”