Part 64 (1/2)

”I ask you to do nothing unworthy of you,” he said. ”I have spoken to a relative of mine living near London--a married lady--whose house is open to you in the interval before our wedding day. When your visit has been prolonged over a fortnight only, we can be married. Write home by all means to prevent them from feeling anxious about you. Tell them that you are safe and happy, and under responsible and respectable care--but say no more. As long as it is possible for Madame Pratolungo to make mischief between us, conceal the place in which you are living. The instant we are married reveal everything. Let all your friends--let all the world know that we are man and wife!”

His arm trembled round me; his face flushed deep; his eyes devoured me.

Some women, in my place, might have been offended; others might have been flattered. As for me--I can trust the secret to these pages--I was frightened.

”Is it an elopement that you are proposing to me?” I asked.

”An elopement!” he repeated. ”Between two engaged people who have only themselves to think of.”

”I have my father to think of; and my aunt to think of,” I said. ”You are proposing to me to run away from them, and to keep in hiding from them!”

”I am asking you to pay a fortnight's visit at the house of a married lady--and to keep the knowledge of that visit from the ears of the worst enemy you have, until you have become my wife,” he answered. ”Is there anything so very terrible in my request that you should turn pale at it, and look at me in that frightened way? Have I not courted you with your father's consent? Am I not your promised husband? Are we not free to decide for ourselves? There is literally no reason--if it could be done--why we should not be married to-morrow. And you still hesitate?

Lucilla! Lucilla! you force me to own the doubt that has made me miserable ever since I have been here. Are you indeed as changed towards me as you seem? Do you really no longer love me as you once loved me in the days that are gone?”

He rose, and walked away a few paces, leaning over the parapet with his face in his hands.

I sat alone, not knowing what to say or do. The uneasy sense in me that he had reason to complain of my treating him coldly, was not to be dismissed from my mind by any effort that I could make. He had no right to expect me to take the step which he had proposed--there were objections to it which any woman would have felt in my place. Still, though I was satisfied of this, there was an obstinate something in me which would take his part. It could not have been my conscience surely which said to me--'There was a time when his entreaties would have prevailed on you; there was a time when you would not have hesitated as you are hesitating now?'

Whatever the influence was, it moved me to rise from my seat, and to join him at the parapet.

”You cannot expect me to decide on such a serious matter as this at once,” I said. ”Will you give me a little time to think?”

”You are your own mistress,” he rejoined bitterly. ”Why ask me to give you time? You can take any time you please--you can do as you like.”

”Give me till the end of the week,” I went on. ”Let me be sure that my father persists in not answering either your letter or mine. Though I _am_ my own mistress, nothing but his silence can justify me in going away secretly, and being married to you by a stranger. Don't press me, Oscar! It isn't very long to the end of the week.”

Something seemed to startle him--something in my voice perhaps which told him that I was really distressed. He looked round at me quickly, and caught me with the tears in my eyes.

”Don't cry, for G.o.d's sake!” he said. ”It shall be as you wish. Take your time. We will say no more about it till the end of the week.”

He kissed me in a hurried startled way, and gave me his arm to walk back.

”Grosse is coming to-day,” he continued. ”He mustn't see you looking as you are looking now. You must rest and compose yourself. Come home.”

I went back with him, feeling--oh, so sad and sore at heart! My last faint hope of a renewal of my once-pleasant intimacy with Madame Pratolungo was at an end. She stood revealed to me now as a woman whom I ought never to have known--a woman with whom I could never again exchange a friendly word. I had lost the companion with whom I had once been so happy; and I had pained and disappointed Oscar. My life has never looked so wretched and so worthless to me as it looked to-day on the pier at Ramsgate.

He left me at the door, with a gentle encouraging pressure of my hand.

”I will call again later,” he said; ”and hear what Grosse's report of you is, before he goes back to London. Rest, Lucilla--rest and compose yourself.”

A heavy footstep sounded suddenly behind us as he spoke. We both turned round. Time had slipped by more rapidly than we had thought. There stood Herr Grosse, just arrived on foot from the railway station.

His first look at me seemed to startle and disappoint him. His eyes stared into mine through his spectacles with an expression of surprise and anxiety which I had never seen in them before. Then he turned his head and looked at Oscar with a sudden change--a change, unpleasantly suggestive (to my fancy) of anger or distrust. Not a word fell from his lips. Oscar was left to break the awkward silence. He spoke to Grosse.

”I won't disturb you and your patient now,” he said. ”I will come back in an hour's time.”

”No! you will come in along with me, if you please. I have something, my young gentlemans, that I may want to say to you.” He spoke with a frown on his bushy eyebrows, and pointed in a very peremptory manner to the house-door.

Oscar rang the bell. At the same moment my aunt, hearing us outside, appeared on the balcony above the door.

”Good morning, Mr. Grosse,” she said. ”I hope you find Lucilla looking her best. Only yesterday, I expressed my opinion that she was quite well again.”