She had touched the subject at last. "I had a suspicion, a fear,"
said Jude, "that he--cared about you rather warmly, and perhaps
wanted to marry you."
"Now don't be such a silly boy!"
"He has said something about it, I expect."
"If he had, what would it matter? An old man like him!"
"Oh, come, Sue; he's not so very old. And I know what I saw him
doing--"
"Not kissing me--that I'm certain!"
"No. But putting his arm round your waist."
"Ah--I remember. But I didn't know he was going to."
"You are wriggling out if it, Sue, and it isn't quite kind!"
Her ever-sensitive lip began to quiver, and her eye to blink, at
something this reproof was deciding her to say.
"I know you'll be angry if I tell you everything, and that's why I
don't want to!"
"Very well, then, dear," he said soothingly. "I have no real right
to ask you, and I don't wish to know."
"I shall tell you!" said she, with the perverseness that was
part of her. "This is what I have done: I have promised--I
have promised--that I will marry him when I come out of the
training-school two years hence, and have got my certificate; his
plan being that we shall then take a large double school in a great
town--he the boys' and I the girls'--as married school-teachers often
do, and make a good income between us."
"Oh, Sue! ... But of course it is right--you couldn't have done
better!"
He glanced at her and their eyes met, the reproach in his own belying
his words. Then he drew his hand quite away from hers, and turned
his face in estrangement from her to the window. Sue regarded him
passively without moving.
"I knew you would be angry!" she said with an air of no emotion
whatever. "Very well--I am wrong, I suppose! I ought not to have
let you come to see me! We had better not meet again; and we'll only
correspond at long intervals, on purely business matters!"
This was just the one thing he would not be able to bear, as she
probably knew, and it brought him round at once. "Oh yes, we will,"
he said quickly. "Your being engaged can make no difference to me
whatever. I have a perfect right to see you when I want to; and I
shall!"