I guess in that matter we’re right. Over here it’s a leap in the dark.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she again made answer. She had folded her fan; she stretched out her arm mechanically and plucked a sprig of azalea.
“I guess it doesn’t signify after all,” Jackson however proceeded. “Don’t you know they say that love’s blind at the best?” His keen young face was bent upon hers; his thumbs were in the pockets of his trousers; he smiled with a slight strain, showing his fine teeth. She said nothing, only pulling her azalea to pieces. She was usually so quiet that this small movement was striking.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you in the least without a lot of people,” he went on.
“Yes, it’s very tiresome.”
“I’ve been sick of it. I didn’t want even to come here to-night.”
She hadn’t met his eyes, though she knew they were seeking her own. But now she looked at him straight. She had never objected to his appearance, and in this respect had no repugnance to surmount. She liked a man to be tall and handsome, and Jackson Lemon was neither; but when she was sixteen, and as tall herself as she was to be at twenty, she had been in love—for three weeks—with one of her cousins, a little fellow in the Hussars, who was shorter even than the American, was of inches markedly fewer than her own. This proved that distinction might be independent of stature—not that she had ever reasoned it out. Doctor Lemon’s facial spareness and his bright ocular attention, which had a fine edge and a marked scale, unfolded and applied rule-fashion, affected her as original, and she thought of them as rather formidable to a good many people, which would do very well in a husband of hers. As she made this reflexion it of course never occurred to her that she herself might suffer true measurement, for she was not a sacrificial lamb. She felt sure his features expressed a mind—a mind immensely useful, like a good hack or whatever, and that he knew how to employ. She would never have supposed him a doctor; though indeed when all was said this was very negative and didn’t account for the way he imposed himself.
“Why, then, did you come?” she asked in answer to his last speech.
“Because it seems to me after all better to see you this way than not to see you at all. I want to know you better.”
“I don’t think I ought to stay here,” she said as she looked round her.
“Don’t go till I’ve told you I love you,” the young man distinctly replied.
She made no exclamation, indulged in no start; he couldn’t see even that she changed colour. She took his request with a noble simplicity, her head erect and her eyes lowered. “I don’t think you’ve quite a right to tell me that.”
“Why not?” Jackson demanded. “I want to claim the right. I want you to give it to me.”
“I can’t—I don’t know you. You’ve said that yourself.”
“Can’t you have a little faith?” he at once asked, speaking as fast as if he were not even a little afraid to urge the pace. “That will help us to know each other better. It’s disgusting, the want of opportunity; even at Pasterns I could scarcely get a walk with you. But I’ve the most absolute trust of you. I know I love you, and I couldn’t do more than that at the end of six months. I love your beauty, I love your nature, I love you from head to foot. Don’t move, please don’t move.” He lowered his tone now, but it went straight to her ear and we must believe conveyed a certain eloquence. For himself, after he had heard himself say these words, all his being was in a glow. It was a luxury to speak to her of her beauty; it brought him nearer to her than he had ever been. But the colour had come into her face and seemed to remind him that her beauty wasn’t all. “Everything about you is true and sweet and grand,” he went on; “everything’s dear to me. I’m sure you’re good. I don’t know what you think of me; I asked Lady Beauchemin to tell me, and she told me to judge for myself. Well, then, I judge you like me. Haven’t I a right to assume that till the contrary’s proved? May I speak to your father? That’s what I want to know. I’ve been waiting, but now what should I wait for longer? I want to be able to tell him you’ve given me hope. I suppose I ought to speak to him first. I meant to, to-morrow, but meanwhile, to-night, I thought I’d just put this in. In my country it wouldn’t matter particularly. You must see all that over there for yourself. If you should tell me not to speak to your father I wouldn’t—I’d wait. But I like better to ask your leave to speak to him than ask his to speak to you.”
His voice had sunk almost to a whisper, but, though it trembled, the fact of his pleading gave it intensity. He had the same attitude, his thumbs in his trousers, his neat attentive young head, his smile, which was a matter of course; no one would have imagined what he was saying. She had listened without moving and at the end she raised her eyes. They rested on his own a moment, and he remembered for a long time the look, the clear effluence of splendid maidenhood, as deep as a surrender, that passed her lids.
Disconcertingly, however, there was no surrender in what she answered. “You may say anything you please to my father, but I don’t wish to hear any more. You’ve said too much, considering how little idea you’ve given me before.”
“I was watching you,” said Jackson Lemon.
She held her head higher, still looking straight at him. Then quite seriously, “I don’t like to be watched,” she returned.
“You shouldn’t be so beautiful then. Won’t you give me a word of hope?”
“I’ve never supposed I should marry a foreigner,” said Lady Barb.
“Do you call me a foreigner?”
“I think your ideas are very different and your country different. You’ve told me so yourself.”
“I should like to show it to you. I would make you like it.”
“I’m not sure what you’d make me do,” she went on very honestly.
“Nothing you don’t want.”
“I’m sure you’d try,” she smiled as for more accommodation.
“Well,” said Jackson Lemon, “I’m after all trying now.”
To this she returned that she must go to her mother, and he was obliged to lead her out of the place. Lady Canterville was not immediately found, so that he had time to keep it up a little as they went. “Now that I’ve spoken I’m very happy.”
“Perhaps you’re happy too soon.”
“Ah, don’t say that, Lady Barb,” he tenderly groaned.
“Of course I must think of it.”
“Of course you must!” Jackson abundantly concurred. “I’ll speak to your father to-morrow.”
“I can’t fancy what he’ll say.”
“How can he dislike me? But I guess he doesn’t!” the young man cried in a tone which Lady Beauchemin, had she heard him, would have felt connected with his general retreat upon the quaint. What Lady Beauchemin’s sister thought of it is not recorded; but there is perhaps a clue to her opinion in the answer she made him after a moment’s silence: “Really, you know, you are a foreigner!” With this she turned her back,
