"That is very good of you, I"m sure."
There was a pause. The lady, with a little smile, tranquilly tickled Pompey with the sovereign she had earned. The gentleman fidgeted with his handkerchief.
"Well, Miss Truscott, am I to be gratified?"
"Why do you want me? Won"t some one else do as well?"
Immediately the gentleman became a little rose.
"May I ask you for an answer to my question?"
"You haven"t asked me a question yet."
"Will you be my wife?"
The question was put in a rather louder key than, in such cases, is understood to be the rule. Miss Truscott raised her head, and for some moments kept her glance fixed upon the gentleman, as though she were trying to read something in his face. Then she lowered her glance and made answer thus--
"Frankly--you say you are a business man--let us, as you suggest, understand each other in a business kind of way. In asking me to be your wife, you are not asking for--love?"
As she spoke of love her lips gave just the tiniest twitch.
"I believe that a wife is supposed to love her husband--as a rule."
"In your creed love comes after marriage?"
"At this present moment I"m asking you to be my wife."
"That"s exactly what I understand. You"re not even making a pretence of loving me?"
"Miss Truscott, as you put it, I"m a business man. I have money, you have money----"
"Let"s put the lot together and make a pile. Really, that"s not a bad idea on the whole." It was the young lady who gave this rather unexpected conclusion to his sentence. Then she looked at him steadily with those great eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him he could not understand. "I suppose that all you want from me is "Yes"; and that in complete indifference as to whether I like you or do not?"
"If you didn"t like me you wouldn"t be sitting here."
"Really, that"s not a bad idea again. You arrive at rapid conclusions in your own peculiar way. I suppose if I told you that I could like a man--love him better than my life--you would not understand."
"That sort of thing is not my line. I"m not a sentimental kind of man.
I say a thing and mean a thing and when I say I"ll do a thing it"s just as good as done."
"Then all you want me to be is--Mrs. Ely?"
"What else do you suppose I want you to be? It"s amazing how even the most sensible women like to beat about the bush. Here have I asked you a good five minutes to be my wife, and you"re just coming to the point. Why can"t you say right out--Yes or No."
Miss Truscott shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose it doesn"t matter?"
"What doesn"t matter?"
"What I say."
"By George, though, but it does!"
Miss Truscott leaned her head back in her chair. She put her hand before her mouth as if to hide a yawn. She closed her eyes. She looked more than half asleep.
"Then I will."
"Will what?"
"Say "Yes.""
"You mean that you will be my wife? It"s a bargain, mind!"
"It is a bargain. That"s just the proper word to use."
"That"s all right. Then I"ll send a wire to Ash to let him know it"s done."
"Yes, send a wire up to town to let him know it"s done."
Mr. Ely moved towards the house. From her voice and manner Miss Truscott still seemed more than half asleep; but hers was a curious kind of sleepiness, for in the corner of each of her closed eyelids there gleamed something that looked very like a drop of diamond dew.
Prosaic people might have said it was a tear.
CHAPTER V
MR. ELY DEPARTS
Mr. Ely returned to town on the following morning, and Miss Truscott was an engaged young woman. The interval between the moment of her becoming engaged and the departure of the gentleman was not--we are rather at a loss for the proper word to use--let us put it, was not exactly so pleasant as it might have been.
Although the man and the maid had plighted troth they certainly did not seem like lovers; they scarcely even seemed to be friends. The position seemed to be a little strained. Mr. Ely noticed this as the day wore on. He resented it.
In the garden after dinner he relieved his mind. The lady was seated, the admirable Pompey on her knee, so engaged in reading as to appear wholly oblivious that the gentleman was in her neighbourhood. For some time Mr. Ely fidgeted about in silence. The lady did not appear even to notice that. At last he could keep still no longer.
"You seem very fond of reading?"
"I am." The lady did not even take her eyes off her book to answer him, but read tranquilly on.
"I hope I"m not in your way."
"Not at all"; which was true enough. He might have been miles away for all the notice the lady appeared to take of him.
"One has to come into the country to learn manners."
"One has to come into the country to do what?"