“I am not going to marry you, or any one, Mr. Carruthers. What do you think of me—! Fancy my consenting to come back here for ever, and live with you—when I don’t know you a bit—and having to put up with your—perhaps—kissing me, and, and—things of that sort! It is perfectly dreadful to think of!”

He laughed as if in spite of himself. “But supposing I promised not to kiss you——?”

“Even so,” I said, and I couldn’t help biting the end of my pen, “it could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else—and there it is! Once you’re married, everything nice is wrong!”

“Evangeline! I won’t let you go—out of my life—you strange little witch, you have upset me, disturbed me, I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much.”

“Pouff!” I said, and I pouted at him.

“You have everything in your life to fill it—position, riches, friends—you don’t want a green-eyed adventuress.”

I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady[63] Katherine. I would be there about 6 o’clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style.

[63]

“If I let you go, it is only for the time,” Mr. Carruthers said, as I signed my name. “I intend you to marry me—do you hear!”

“Again I say qui vivra verra!” I laughed, and rose with the note in my hand.

Lord Robert looked almost ready to cry when I told him I was off in the afternoon.

“I shall see you again,” he said. “Lady Katherine is a relation of my aunt’s husband, Lord Merrenden. I don’t know her myself, though.”

I do not believe him—how can he see me again—young men do talk a lot of nonsense.

“I shall come over on Wednesday to see how you are getting on,” Mr. Carruthers said. “Please do be in.”

I promised I would, and then I came upstairs.

And so it has come to an end, my life at Branches. I am going to start a new phase of existence, my first beginning as an adventuress!

How completely all one’s ideas can change[64] in a few days. This day three weeks ago Mrs. Carruthers was alive. This day two weeks ago I found myself no longer a prospective heiress—and only three days ago I was contemplating calmly the possibility of marrying Mr. 

 Prev. P 31/136 next