beg you will not do so—please consider it your home for so long as you wish—until you can make some arrangements for yourself. You look so very young to be going about the world alone!”

He bent down and gazed at me closer—there was an odd tone in his voice.

“I am twenty, and I have been often snubbed,” I said, calmly; “that prepares one for a good deal. I shall enjoy doing what I please.”

[26]

[26]

“And what are you going to please?”

“I shall go to Claridge’s until I can look about me.”

He moved uneasily.

“But have you no relations? No one who will take care of you?”

“I believe none. My mother was nobody particular you know—a Miss Tonkins by name.”

“But your father?” He sat down now on the sofa beside me; there was a puzzled, amused look in his face—perhaps I was amazing him.

“Papa? Oh! Papa was the last of his family—they were decent people, but there are no more of them.”

He pushed one of the cushions aside.

“It is an impossible position for a girl—completely alone. I cannot allow it. I feel responsible for you. After all, it would do very well if you married me—I am not particularly domestic by nature, and should be very little at home—so you could live here, and have a certain position, and I would come back[27] now and then to see you were getting on all right.”

[27]

One could not say if he were mocking, or no.

“It is too good of you,” I said, without any irony, “but I like freedom, and when you were at home it might be such a bore——”

He leant back, and laughed merrily.

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