Black Sheep

The manner in which he made this abrupt proposal struck her as being so typical of him that a shaky laugh was dragged from her. 'Of all the graceless ways of making me an offer – ! No, no, you are not serious! you cannot be!'

'Of course I'm serious! A pretty hobble I should be in if I weren't, and you accepted my offer! The thing is that it is such a devil of a time since I proposed marriage to a girl that I've forgotten how to set about it. If I ever knew, but I daresay I didn't, for I was always a poor hand at making flowery speeches.' He smiled at her again, a little ruefully. 'That I should love a bright particular star! '

'Oh – !' she breathed. 'Oh, pray don't say such things!'

'I won't, if you dislike it,' he said obligingly.

'Dislike it! How could anyone dislike to have such a thing said to her? But it won't do! You mustn't say any more on this head! Pray do not!'

'No, that's quite unreasonable,' he said. 'I won't pay you any compliments, but you can't expect me not to say any more! I've asked you to marry me, Abigail!'

'You must know I can't – how impossible it would be!'

'No, I don't. Why should it be?'

'The – the circumstances!' she uttered, in a stifled voice.

He looked to be a good deal puzzled. 'What circumstances? Mine? Oh, I'm perfectly well able to support a wife! You must have been listening to my horrid nephew.'

'I've done no such thing!' she said, much incensed. 'And if I had I shouldn't believe a word he said! What's more, con siderations of that nature wouldn't weigh with me, if – if I returned your regard!'

'Don't you? Not at all?'

'I – No! I mean – I mean, it isn't that!'

'Well, if it isn't that – Good God, you don't mean to tell me it's because I made a cake of myself over Celia Morval twenty years ago? No, really, my sweet life, that's doing it much too brown! What had it to do with you? You must have been in the nursery!'

'Yes, but – Oh, surely you can perceive how impossible it would be for me to marry you? She was my brother's wife!'

'No, she wasn't.'

'She was engaged to be married to him, at all events, and she became his wife! And, if it hadn't been hushed up, there would have been a shocking scandal – of your making!'

'But it was hushed up,' he pointed out.

She looked helplessly at him. 'How can I make you understand?'

'Oh, I do understand! You don't care a straw for all that ancient history, but you know that James would, and you're afraid he'd kick up the devil of a dust. He wouldn't, but I daresay he'd wear you to death, trying to heckle or cajole you into giving me up. However, you needn't let that worry you: I can deal with James.'

She said, in a low tone: 'I'm not afraid of James. If – if I knew that I was doing right. But it wouldn't be James only. My sisters – all my family – would be thrown into such an uproar! I only wish I might not be wholly cast off !' She glanced up fleetingly, and tried to speak more lightly. 'I shouldn't like that, you know. They may not know a

bout Celia – indeed, I am very sure they don't, though I suppose Cornelia might, being James's wife – but, alas, they do know that you are the prodigal son!'

'Alas? What if they didn't know it? Would my disreputable past weigh with you?'

Her head was down-bent; she shook it slightly. 'Not if I loved you enough.'

'That sounds to me remarkably like a leveller. Don't you?'

She said frankly: 'I don't know. That's to say, it is so easy to mistake one's feelings: that I do know, for I cut my eye-teeth years ago. I hadn't any thought of marriage, and I didn't think that you had either, so – so I've had no time to consider. I own that if the circumstances had been different I – I should have been sorely tempted! But to marry – and at my age, too! – to disoblige one's family ought not to be considered. Do you understand?'

'Well, I understand that you've the devil of a lot of scruples, but it's no use expecting me to enter into them,' he replied. 'Family ties don't mean anything to me: didn't I tell you so once? As for making a sacrifice of yourself to suit your family's notions of respectability, I call it addlebrained!'

She smiled reluctantly. 'You would, of course! But it isn't quite that. I don't think I can explain it, because it's all tangled in my head – making me addlebrained! Do I seem odiously missish?'

'Yes, but I wasn't going to say so,' he assured her.

The laughter sprang into her eyes. 'Obnoxious creature! If only you didn't always make me laugh! Sometimes I wonder if you have any proper feelings at all!'