William Le Queux

"Whatsoever a Man Soweth"

Chapter One.

Concerns a Proposal of Marriage.

“Then you really don’t intend to marry me, Wilfrid?”

“The honour of being your husband, Tibbie, I must respectfully decline,” I said.

“But I’d make you a very quiet, sociable wife, you know. I can ride to hounds, cook, sew clothes for old people, and drive a motor. What higher qualifications do you want?”

“Well—love, for instance.”

“Ah! That’s what I’m afraid I don’t possess, any more them you do,” she laughed. “It isn’t a family characteristic. With us, it’s everyone for herself,” and she beat a tattoo upon the window-pane with the tips of her slim, white fingers.

“I know,” I said, smiling. “We are old friends enough to speak quite frankly, aren’t we?”

“Of course. That’s why I asked you ‘your intentions’—as the mater calls them. But it seems that you haven’t any.”

“Not in your direction, Tibbie.”

“And yet you told me you loved me!” said the pretty woman at my side in mock reproach, pouting her lips.

“Let’s see—how long ago was that? You were thirteen, I think, and I was still at Eton—eh?”

“I was very fond of you,” she declared. “Indeed, I like you now. Don’t you remember those big boxes of sweets you used to smuggle in to me, and how we used to meet in secret and walk down by the river in the evening? Those were really very happy days, Wilfrid,” and she sighed at the memory of our youthful love.

We were standing together in the sunset at one of the old diamond-paned windows of the Long Gallery at Ryhall Place, the ancient home of the Scarcliffs in Sussex, gazing away over the broad park which stretched as far as the eye could reach, its fine old avenue of beeches running in a straight line to East Marden village, and the 

  P 1/175 next