第73章 ETHELBERTA'S DRAWING-ROOM(2)

You could say anything in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him anything you might wish to know about my--about me. All you would need to say to myself are just the two little words--"I will," in the church here at the end of the Crescent.'

'I am sorry to pain you, Mr. Neigh--so sorry,' said Ethelberta.

'But I cannot say them.' She was rather distressed that, despite her discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual under the circumstances.

'It does not matter about paining me,' said Neigh. 'Don't take that into consideration at all. But I did not expect you to leave me so entirely without help--to refuse me absolutely as far as words go--after what you did. If it had not been for that I should never have ventured to call. I might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could listen to a word.'

'What do you allude to?' said Ethelberta. 'How have I acted?'

Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became sufficiently clear. 'I wish my little place at Farnfield had been worthier of you,' he said brusquely. 'However, that's a matter of time only. It is useless to build a house there yet. I wish Ihad known that you would be looking over it at that time of the evening. A single word, when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient. Nothing could have given me so much delight as to have driven you round.'

He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had inspired him to call upon her to-day! Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn.

Her face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute's peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency of Ethelberta's lovely features now.

'Yes; I walked round,' said Ethelberta faintly.

Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he did not value that. His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable grounds.

'I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me occasionally,' he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone. 'How could I help thinking so? It was your doing that which encouraged me. Now, was it not natural--I put it to you?'

Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit. Lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it--as a thing, in short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties--it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards.

'It was through you in the first place that I did look into your grounds!' she said excitedly. 'It was your presumption that caused me to go there. I should not have thought of such a thing else. If you had not said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield either--Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.'

'I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?'

'Yes, you did--not to me, but to somebody,' said Ethelberta, with her eyes over-full of retained tears.

'What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to you?' inquired Neigh, with much concern.

'You said--you said, you meant to marry me--just as if I had no voice in the matter! And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.'

Neigh changed colour a little. 'Well, I did say it: I own that Isaid it,' he replied at last. Probably he knew enough of her nature not to feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become possessed of the information. The explanation was certainly a great excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit. 'I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages ago, and I feel it still!' he continued, with listless ardour. 'You seem to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has been ever since Iheard of it.'

'If you only knew all!' she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason just then that she should go into details about her life than that he should about his. But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this.

'I do not wish to know more,' said Neigh.