“Not I. It is bad enough to be made a fool of by you without making one of myself.”
Mary grew nervous. “I think we are going back to the old subject,” she said.
“No. I was thinking of something else. Miss Sutherland.” here he suddenly raised his voice, which broke, and compelled him to pause and clear his throat— “Miss Sutherland: I hope I am not going to bungle this business by being too hasty — too precipitate, as it were. But if you are really going away, would you mind telling me first whether you have any objection to think over becoming Mrs Hoskyn. Just to think over it, you know.”
“Are you serious?” said Mary, incredulously.
“Of course I am. You don’t suppose I would say such a thing in jest?”
Mary discomfited, privately deplored her womanly disability to make friends with a man without being proposed to. “I think we had better drop this subject too, Mr. Hoskyn,” she replied. Then, recovering her courage, she added, “Of all the arrangements you have proposed, I think this is the most injudicious.’
“We will drop it of you like. I am in no hurry — at least I mean that I don’t wish to hurry you. But you will think it over won’t you?”
“Had you not better think over it yourself, Mr Hoskyn?”
“I have thought of it — let me see! I guess I saw you first about twenty-one days and two hours ago. Well, I have thinking over it constantly all that time.”
“Think better of it.”
“I will. The more I think of it, the better I think of it. And if you will only say yes, I shan’t think the worse of it in this world. Tell me one thing, Miss Sutherland, did you ever know me to make a mistake yet?”
“Not in my twenty-two days and two hour’s experience of you.”
“Twenty-one days and two hours. Well, I am not making a mistake now. Don’t concern yourself about my prospects: stick to your own. If you can hit it off with me. depend on it, my family affairs are settled to my satisfaction forever. What do you think?”
“I still think we had better abandon the subject.”
“For the present?”
“Forever, if you please, Mr Hoskyn.”
“For ever is a long word. I’ve been too abrupt. But you can turn it over in your mind whilst amusing yourself in Devonshire. There is no use in bothering yourself about it now, when we are all separating. Hush. Here’s Nanny.”
Mary was prevented by the entrance of Mrs Phipson from distinctly refusing Mr Hoskyn’s proposal. He, during the rest of the day, seemed to have regained his usual good spirits, and chatted with Mary without embarrassment, although he contrived not to not to be left alone with her. When she retired for the night, he had a short conversation with his sister, who asked whether he had said anything to Mary.
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say much. She was rather floored: I knew I was beginning too soon. We agreed to let the matter stand over. But I expect it will be all right.”
“What on earth do you mean by agreeing to let the matter stand over? Did she say yes or no?”
“She did not jump at me. In fact she said no; but she didn’t mean it.”
“Hoity-toity! I wonder whom she would consider good enough for her. She may refuse once too often.”
“She won’t refuse me. Though, if she does, I don’t see why you should lose your temper on that score, since you have always maintained that I had no chance.”
“I am not losing my temper. I knew perfectly well that she would refuse; but I think she may go further and fare worse.”
“She hasn’t refused. And — now you mind what I am telling you, Nanny — not a word to her on the subject. Hold your tongue; and don’t pretend to know anything about my plans. Do you hear?”
“You need not make such a to-do about it, Johnny. I don’t want to speak to her. I am sure I don’t care whether she marries you or not.”
“So much the better. If you give her a hint about going further and faring worse — I know you would like to — it is all up with me.”
Mary heard no more about Mr Hoskyn’s suit just then. She left Cavendish Square next day, and went with Lady Geraldine to the southwest of Devonshire, where Sir John Porter owned a large white house with a Doric portico, standing in a park surrounded by wooded hills. Mary began sketching on the third day, in spite of her former resolution to discontinue the practice. Lady Geraldine was too busy recovering the management of her house and dairy farm after her season’s absence, to interfere with the occupation of her guest; but at the end of the week she remarked one evening with a sigh:
“No more solitude for us, Mary. Sir John is coming tomorrow, and is bringing Mr Conolly as a prisoner of the invading army of autumn visitors. Since Sir John became a director of the Electro-motor company, he become bent on having everything here done by electricity. We shall have a couple of electro-motors harnessed to the pony phaeton shortly.”
“Mr Conolly is coming on business then.”
“Of course he is coming to pay a visit and make a holiday. But he will incidentally take notes of how the place can be most inconveniently upset with his machinery.”
“You are not glad that he is coming.”
“I am indifferent. So many people come here in the autumn whom I don’t care for that I have become hardened to the labor of entertaining them. I like to have young people about me. Sir John, of course, has to do with men of business and politicians; and he invites them all to run down for a fortnight it in the off season. So they run down; and it is seldom by any means possible to wind them up for conversational purposes until they go away again.”
“Mr. Conolly never seems to require winding up. Don’t you like him?”
“He never seems to require anything, and it is partly for that reason that I don’t like him. I have no fault to find with him — that is another reason, I think. Since I met him I have become ever so much more tolerant of human frailty. I respect the brute; but I don’t like him.
This Mr Conolly was known to Mary as a man who, having been an obscure workman, had suddenly become famous as the inventor of something called an electro-motor, by which he had made much money. He had then married a highly born young lady, celebrated in society for her beauty. Not long afterwards she had eloped with a gentleman of her own rank, whom she had known all her life. Conolly had thereupon divorced her, and resumed his bachelor life, displaying so little concern, that many who knew her had since regarded him with mistrust and dislike, feeling that he was not the man to make a home for a young woman accustomed to the tenderest consideration and most chivalrous courtesy in her father’s set. Even women, whose sympathy he would not keep in countenance by any pretense of brokenheartedness, had taken his wife’s part so far as to say that he ought never to have married her. Mary had heard this much of his history in the course of gossip, and had met him a few times in society in London.
“I don’t dislike him,” she said, in reply to Lady Geraldine’s last remark; “but he is an unanswerable sort of person; and I doubt if it would make the slightest difference to him whether the whole world hated or loved him.”
“Just so. Can anything be more unamiable? Such a man ought to be a judge, or an executioner.”
“After all, he is only a man; and he must have some feeling,” said Mary.
“If he has he ought to show it,” said Lady Geraldine. A servant just then entered with letters which had come by the evening mail. There were some for Mary; among them one addressed in a rapid business hand which she did not recognize. She opened them absently, thinking that a little experience