"That is very kind of you," said Beatrice, with an ominous humility.
This was disconcerting, but Geoffrey was determined, and he went on in a somewhat flippant tone born of the most intense nervousness and hatred of his task. Never had he loved her so well as now in this moment when he was about to counsel her to marry another man. And yet he persevered in his folly. For, as so often happens, the shrewd insight and knowledge of the world which distinguished Geoffrey as a lawyer, when dealing with the affairs of others, quite deserted him in this crisis of his own life and that of the woman who worshipped him.
"Since I have been here," he said, "I have had made to me no less than three appeals on your behalf and by separate people--by your father, who fancies that you are pining for Owen Davies; by Owen Davies, who is certainly pining for you; and by old Edward, intervening as a kind of domestic amicus curiæ."
"Indeed," said Beatrice, in a voice of ice.
"All these three urged the same thing--the desirability of your marrying Owen Davies."
Beatrice's face grew quite pale, her lips twitched and her grey eyes flashed angrily.
"Really," she said, "and have you any advice to give on the subject, Mr. Bingham?"
"Yes, Beatrice, I have. I have thought it over, and I think that--forgive me again--that if you can bring yourself to it, perhaps you had better marry him. He is not such a bad sort of man, and he is well off."
They had been walking rapidly, and now they were reaching the spot known as the "Amphitheatre," that same spot where Owen Davies had proposed to Beatrice some seven months before.
Beatrice passed round the projecting edge of rock, and walked some way towards the flat slab of stone in the centre before she answered. While she did so a great and bitter anger filled her heart. She saw, or thought she saw, it all. Geoffrey wished to be rid of her. He had discerned an element of danger in their intimacy, and was anxious to make that intimacy impossible by pushing her into a hateful marriage. Suddenly she turned and faced him--turned like a thing at bay. The last red rays of the sunset struck upon her lovely face made more lovely still by its stamp of haughty anger: they lay upon her heaving breast. Full in the eyes she looked him with those wide angry eyes of hers--never before had he seen her so imperial a mien. Her dignity and the power of her presence literally awed him, for at times Beatrice's beauty was of that royal stamp which when it hides a heart, is a compelling force, conquering and born to conquer.