Almost before the meal was over, my father rose from his seat at the head of the table, and indicating the lawyers who sat near to him, he said:
"These gentlemen and I have business to fix up—money matters and all that—so I guess we'll step into the library and leave you young people to look after yourselves."
Everybody rose to leave the room.
"All back for tea-time," said Aunt Bridget.
"Of course you don't want me," said Betsy Beauty with a giggle, and at the next moment I was alone with his lordship, who drew a long breath that was almost like a yawn, and said:
"Is there no quiet place we can slip away to?"
There was the glen at the back of the house (the Cape Flora of Martin Conrad), so I took him into that, not without an increasing sense of embarrassment. It was a clear October day, the glen was dry, and the air under the shadow of the thinning trees was full of the soft light of the late autumn.
"Ah, this is better," said his lordship.
He lit a cigar and walked for some time by my side without speaking, merely flicking the seeding heads off the dying thistles with his walking stick, and then ruckling it through the withered leaves with which the path was strewn.
But half way up the glen he began to look aslant at me through his monocle, and then to talk about my life in Rome, wondering how I could have been content to stay so long at the Convent, and hinting at a rumour which had reached him that I had actually wished to stay there altogether.
"Extraordinary! 'Pon my word, extraordinary! It's well enough for women who have suffered shipwreck in their lives to live in such places, but for a young gal with any fortune, any looks … why I wonder she doesn't die of ennui."
I was still too nervous and embarrassed to make much protest, so he went on to tell me with what difficulty he supported the boredom of his own life even in London, with its clubs, its race-meetings, its dances, its theatres and music halls, and the amusement to be got out of some of the ladies of society, not to speak of certain well-known professional beauties.
One of his great friends—his name was Eastcliff—was going to marry the most famous of the latter class (a foreign dancer at the "Empire"), and since he was rich and could afford to please himself, why shouldn't he?
When we reached the waterfall at the top of the glen (it had been the North Cape of Martin Conrad), we sat on a rustic seat which stands there, and then, to my still deeper embarrassment, his lordship's conversation came to close quarters.
Throwing away his cigar and taking his silver-haired terrier on his lap he said:
"Of course you know what the business is which the gentlemen are discussing in the library?"
As well as I could for the nervousness that was stifling me, I answered that I knew.
He stroked the dog with one hand, prodded his stick into the gravel with the other, and said:
"Well, I don't know what your views about marriage are. Mine, I may say, are liberal."
I listened without attempting to reply.
"I think nine-tenths of the trouble that attends married life—the breakdowns and what not—come of an irrational effort to tighten the marriage knot."
Still I said nothing.
"To imagine that two independent human beings can be tied together like a couple of Siamese twins, neither to move without the other, living precisely the same life, year in, year out … why, it's silly, positively silly."
In my ignorance I could find nothing to say, and after another moment my intended husband swished the loosened gravel with his stick and said:
"I believe in married people leaving each other free—each going his and her own way—what do you think?"
I must have stammered some kind of answer—I don't know what—for I remember that he said next:
"Quite so, that's my view of matrimony, and I'm glad to see you appear to share it. … Tell the truth, I was afraid you wouldn't," he added, with something more about the nuns and the convent.
I wanted to say that I didn't, but my nervousness was increasing every moment, and before I could find words in which to protest he was speaking to me again.
"Our friends in the library seem to think that you and I could get along together, and I'm disposed to think they're right—aren't you?"
In my ignorance and helplessness, and with the consciousness of what I was expected to do, I merely looked at him without speaking.
Then he fixed his monocle afresh, and, looking back at me in a curious way, he said:
"I don't think I should bore you, my dear. In fact, I should be rather proud of having a good-looking woman for my wife, and I fancy I could give you a good time. In any case"—this with a certain condescension—"my name might be of some use to you."
A sort of shame was creeping over me. The dog was yawning in my face. My intended husband threw it off his knee.
"Shall we consider it a settled thing, then?" he asked, and when in my confusion I still made no reply (having nothing which I felt myself entitled to say), he said something about Aunt Bridget and what she had told him at luncheon about my silence and shyness, and then rising to his feet he put my arm through his own, and turned our faces towards home.
That was all. As I am a truthful woman, that was everything. Not a word from me, nay, not half a word, merely a passive act of silent acquiescence, and in my youthful and almost criminal innocence I was committed to the most momentous incident of my life.
But if there was no love-making, no fondling, no kissing, no courtship of any kind, and none of the delirious rapture which used to be described in Alma's novels, I was really grateful for that, and immensely relieved to find that matters could he completed without them.
When we reached the house, the bell was ringing for tea and my father was coming out of the library, followed by the lawyers.
"So that's all right, gentlemen?" he was saying.
"Yes, that's all right, sir," they were answering; and then, seeing us as we entered, my father said to Lord Raa:
"And what about you two?"
"We're all right also," said his lordship in his drawling voice.
"Good!" said my father, and he slapped his lordship sharply on the back, to his surprise, and I think, discomfiture.
Then with a cackle of light laughter among the men, we all trooped into the drawing room.
Aunt Bridget in her gold-rimmed spectacles and new white cap, poured out the tea from our best silver tea-pot, while Nessy MacLeod with a geranium in her red hair, and Betsy Beauty, with large red roses in her bosom, handed round the cups. After a moment, my father, with a radiant face, standing back to the fire, said in a loud voice:
"Friends all, I have something to tell you."
Everybody except myself looked up and listened, though everybody knew what was coming.
"We've had a stiff tussle in the library this afternoon, but everything is settled satisfactory—and the marriage is as good as made."
There was a chorus of congratulations for me, and a few for his lordship, and then my father said again:
"Of course there'll be deeds to draw up, and I want things done correct, even if it costs me a bit of money. But we've only one thing more to fix up to-day, and then we're through—the wedding. When is it to come off?"
An appeal was made to me, but I felt it was only formal, so I glanced across to Lord Raa without speaking.