I started back, and looked at him in amazement. For the moment, I was incapable of answering in any other way than that.
"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."