Tiny Luttrell Part 28

"So must Tiny--I never heard a madder idea in my life!"

"Than _what_, my dear?"

"Her going out with Herbert in the _Ballaarat_!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE THIRD TIME OF ASKING.

December was at hand soon enough, and with the month came Lord Manister for his answer. Though more than slightly nervous he entered the modest house in Kensington with his head very high; and certain inappropriate sensations visited him during the few minutes he was kept waiting in the drawing room. He did not sit down. Then it was Tiny Luttrell who opened the door, and those sensations made good their escape from a bosom in which they had no business. In the living presence of the person one proposes to marry there are some misgivings that had need be impossible--Christina little suspected her privilege of shutting the door on Manister's with her own hand. He sat down at her example.

But if he was nervous so was she, and as he came bravely to the point she found it more and more difficult to meet his hungry eyes. It was rather rare for Christina to experience any difficulty of the kind. She rose, and stood in front of the fire, with her back to the room and Lord Manister. There, with her forehead resting on the rim of the mantelpiece (for Tiny that was not far to bend), and while the hot fire scorched her plain gray skirt and gave a needed color to the downcast face, she heard what Manister had to say. Soon she knew that he was saying it with his elbow on one end of the mantelpiece; and liked him for facing her so, and compelling her to face him. But when she found him waiting for his answer, she gave him it without lifting her eyes from the fire.

"No!"

He had asked her whether she had been able to make up her mind. The answer she had given was, indeed, the truth; but it had been prepared for a more conclusive question. She was vexed with him for the question he had chosen to put first; and the more so because it had s.n.a.t.c.hed from her an admission which she had not intended to make. But she had not made up her mind--that was the simple truth; and now she trusted that he would make up his.

Instead of which he said sadly, after a pause:

"I wanted to give you six months!"

"It was very wrong of you to give me one," she answered with startling ingrat.i.tude.

"Why wrong?"

"You might have seen that I was unworthy of you."

"I might have given up loving you, I suppose, in a second!"

"I wish you would----"

"I never shall!"

"If you ever began," Christina added to her own sentence. At last her face was raised, and now it was his eyes that fell before the cool ac.u.men of her smile.

"You don't believe in me yet!" he groaned. "Not yet, though I wait, wait, wait."

"No one asked you to wait," Lord Manister was reminded.

"But you see that I can't help it! You see that I am miserable about you!"

This indeed was sufficiently plain; and the sight of his misery was softening Christina by degrees. She said more kindly:

"Listen to me, Lord Manister. It is a month since you saw me. At this moment you may feel what you are saying. Very well, then, you _do_ feel it; but have you felt it throughout the last month? Have you felt so patient--you are far too patient--all the time? Has it never seemed to you that my keeping you in doubt, even for one month, was a piece of impertinence you ought never to have stood? Wouldn't your friends simply think you mad if they knew how you were allowing me to use you? Haven't you yourself occasionally remembered who you are, and who I am, and burst out laughing? I must say I have; it sometimes seems to me so utterly absurd---- And you see you can't answer my questions!"

He could not; one after another they had penetrated to the quick.

"They are not fair questions," Manister said doggedly. "What may have crossed my mind when I have felt worried and wretched has nothing to do with it. Isn't it enough that I tell you I can wait your own good time--that I feel a pride in waiting, now we are together and I am looking in your eyes?"

"No, I don't think that's quite enough," replied Christina softly. "It would hardly be enough, you know, if you only felt me worth waiting for while you were with me. That would mean that for some reason I fascinated you. And fascination isn't love, Lord Manister. I don't want to be rude--much less unkind--but I can't believe that you have ever been really in love with me; I simply can't!"

Yet she had never felt so near to that belief before. Her words, however, helped Lord Manister back to his dignity.

"Of course you must believe only what you choose," said he loftily. "One cannot force you to believe in one's sincerity. I suppose I spoilt you for believing in mine some time since. At all events you were fond of me once! Only a month ago you liked me all but well enough to marry me. Yet now you do not know!"

"Therefore the decision is left to you, Lord Manister; you must give me up."

"Never! while you are free."

His teeth were clenched.

"But do consider. Most probably I shall never care enough for you to marry you. And oh! I wonder how you can look at me when no other girl in the world would refuse you!"

"Can't you see that this is part of your charm?" cried the young man impulsively. "You are the one girl I know who is not worldly. You are the one girl I want!"

Christina shook her head.

"If I have any charm at all, you oughtn't to know what it is--you ought to love me you can't say why--there's no sizing up real love!" she informed him rapidly, but with a smile. "There's another thing, too. You cannot be used to being treated as I have treated you in many ways. I have often been intensely rude to you. I can't help thinking there must be a good deal of pique in your feeling toward me."

"There is more real love," returned Manister, "if I know it!"

"I wonder if you do know it?" said the girl, with a laugh; but she was wondering very seriously in her heart. He protested no more; she liked him for that, too, as also for the briskness in his tone and manner when he spoke next.

"You say you don't care for me enough, and you say I don't care for you properly, and we won't argue any more about either matter for the moment." He had flung back his head from the hand that had shaded his eyes; his elbow remained on the chimney-piece, but now he was standing erect. "There is something else," said Lord Manister, "that has prevented you from coming to a decision."

"There is certainly one thing that has had something to do with it."

"May I ask what it is?"

"Certainly, Lord Manister. I am going back to Australia."

"Soon?" This was after a pause, during which their eyes had not met.

"Sooner than was intended."

"Is it--is it for any special reason that--that you have kept from me?"

He was agitated by a sudden thought, which she read. She shook her head rea.s.suringly.

"No, it is not to get married, nor yet engaged."

"Then there is no one out there?"

"There is no one anywhere that I could marry for love. That's the simple truth. I am going back to Australia because Herbert is going. Cambridge doesn't suit him, and I'm sorry to say he doesn't suit Cambridge. We came over together, so we are going back together. That, I promise you, is the whole and only explanation. I myself did not want to go so soon."